Geoeconomics, easy money, and political opportunism: the Perils under China and Japan’s high-Speed rail competition

Abstract

China and Japan have engaged in fierce competition over infrastructure lending in East Asia, particularly since the 2010s. Under the intense focus on the geopolitical roots of this competition, the political-economic effects of this competitive statecraft on the smaller Asian countries are less discussed. At first glance, lending competition seems to benefit borrowing countries through access to more financial resources. This paper argues, however, that competitive statecraft leads to an ‘easy money’ conundrum where overeager creditor countries, in pursuit of geostrategic goals, perpetuate political opportunism in borrowing countries. To support this claim, we examine China–Japan competition over two high-speed rail projects in Indonesia and Malaysia. Our process tracing analysis explains how push factors (easy money from China and Japan) and pull factors (the host government’s desire to exploit easy money for political gain) interacted to advance two troubled projects at the cost of borrowing countries’ fiscal discipline and government accountability.