How Equitable and Inclusive? Comparing High-Speed Railway Projects in Indonesia and Thailand

While Southeast Asian governments sometimes wield bargaining power in securing infrastructure deals with external donors like China, many such projects still fail to deliver equitable and inclusive outcomes. This paper argues that autonomy alone, though necessary, is insufficient to ensure socially just infrastructure. We show that the enduring top-down Chinese developmental state model and the concomitant adherence to developmentalism by host states often override participatory and distributive concerns. Comparing Indonesia's Jakarta–Bandung high-speed railways (HSR) and Thailand's Bangkok–Nong Khai HSR, we find that the adherence to developmental state ideation of the Chinese investors on the one hand and developmentalist practices of the Indonesian and Thai project hosts on the other hand produced similarly adverse impacts on local communities, including evictions, environmental degradation, and limited public engagement. We call for a shift in focus from state autonomy alone to the ideational frameworks that underpin infrastructure outcomes, and urge that greater attention be paid to equity and inclusiveness in both scholarly and policy debates.