Another piece of the ambitious 87,546 mile Asian Highway (AH) network slotted into place last month as Vietnam completed its section. The milestone was announced by Do Ngoc Dung, vice director of the Vietnam government's My Thuan Project Management Unit. The Asian Highway now links Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. The $144.77 million construction bill was partly financed by the Asian Development Bank. When completed, the $44 billion AH network will weave through 32 countries, connect Asia with Europe, and boost regional economies by facilitating trade and tourism. It also fuels dreams of a Pan-Asian community with a common social-political-economic identity analogous to the European Union. "There is a 12 to 20 percent [increase in growth] with greater investment in highways in India," said A. Veeraragavan, a professor with the leading Indian Institute of Technology and one of the country's top experts in highway engineering. "The GDP growth rate may vary from Asian country to country, but the bottom line is more advantages with better highways, from saving lives lost in traffic accidents to economic benefits."
Keep reading for free!
Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:
Or, Subscribe now to get full access.
Already a subscriber? Log in here .
What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:
A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:
- Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
- Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
- Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
- The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
- The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
- Completely ad-free reading.
And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.