Richard S Ehrlich
China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects are being scrutinized in Thailand after Myanmar’s 7.7 earthquake pancaked a 30-floor building 966 kilometers (600 miles) away that Chinese engineers were constructing in Bangkok.
The incomplete skyscraper was the only building to collapse in the lightly damaged Thai capital. But the disaster exposed allegedly substandard steel reinforcing rods that had snapped, reducing the building to a huge rubble pile that crushed about 87 construction workers, including 15 confirmed dead and 72 who disappeared.
“I watched multiple clips of the building collapse from different angles,” a stunned Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said.
“From my experience in the construction industry, I have never seen an issue like this.
“We must investigate thoroughly because a significant portion of the budget was allocated, and the deadline for completion had been extended,” Paetongtarn said.
The investigation began with a bizarre, troubling sight. Two days after the March 28 quake, four Chinese men were filmed grabbing in their arms as many construction-related documents as they could carry and running away from the rubble site.
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