For Washington, it should be encouraging that Beijing is coming up with tangible ways to boost regional connectivity in Southeast Asia, a policy the United States also supports. But U.S. businesses should not, and cannot, afford to be absent from large regional infrastructure schemes. U.S. companies no longer compete with their Japanese and Korean rivals in the construction of roads and railroads in Southeast Asia. But U.S. companies still have a competitive advantage in telecommunications, the advanced recovery of oil and gas, energy projects, and the design and construction of airports and ports. Infrastructure projects will carry political and strategic implications well into the future. For instance, a transnational railway connecting mainland Southeast Asia to China promotes integration in a different fashion than a future economic corridor linking one end of mainland Southeast Asia to another.
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