🌍 Indonesia get its first high-speed train

Hi there Intriguer. Most bad ideas don’t make it off the whiteboard. But every now and then you get a martini spy glass, featuring a mic and antenna disguised as an olive and toothpick. Sounds cool, right? Except it short-circuits when you pour in the martini.

Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• 🚄 Indonesia gets its first bullet train, courtesy of China.

• 🇲🇿 How a Swiss bank broke Mozambique’s economy.

• ➕ Plus: This year’s Nobel winners, how the papers are covering EU foreign ministers meeting in Kyiv, and why folks in the Kingdom of Eswatini are tweeting about elections.

1. 🇨🇳 China: A top Chinese scientist insists India’s historic Moon probe didn’t land near the south pole as claimed. China is planning its own unmanned space mission to the Moon’s south pole next year.

2. 🇪🇺 EU: The new EU carbon border tax entered force on Sunday for a trial period, meaning trading partners will now have to report the emissions tied to various exports. The aim is to ensure a level playing field for those EU firms paying an EU carbon price.

3. 🇱🇦 Laos: Authorities have unveiled a series of incentives to encourage citizens to buy electric vehicles. The head of the national Department of Industry and Handicraft said EVs were crucial to cut the country’s dependence on oil imports.

4. 🇦🇷 Argentina: Aspiring presidential candidates have faced off in the first of two debates ahead of elections on 22 October. Javier Milei, whose platform includes the dollarisation and liberalisation of Argentina’s economy, is currently leading the polls.

5. 🇹🇷 Turkey: Turkey conducted airstrikes against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) targets in Syria and Iraq over the weekend, following a PKK suicide bombing in Ankara. Turkey says the group is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths over the decades.

🚄 Indonesia | Geopolitics

Indonesia gets its first bullet train

Indonesian President Joko Widodo inaugurated Southeast Asia’s first bullet train on Monday after years of delay and $1.2B in unforeseen costs.

The $7.3B high-speed electric train connects Jakarta to the hub of Bandung 142km away. It can reach speeds of 350 km/h, and cuts the trip between the two major Indonesian cities from three hours to 36 minutes.

The best part? The train is called WHOOSH, which is a Bahasa acronym for ‘time-saving, optimal operation, reliable system’.

During the inauguration, Indonesia’s investment minister thanked the “Chinese government and its related companies”, which financed a significant part of the project through Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

It’s China’s first full high-speed rail project abroad, and construction of a 608km high-speed link is also underway in Thailand. But other proposed high-speed links haven’t materialised. Why?

• 😬 Beijing sometimes baulks at local political & security risks, and

• 💳 Hosts often baulk at taking on too much debt.

So most BRI rail projects, like the Ethiopia-Djibouti link (opened in 2018) or the Belgrade-Budapest line (due 2025), use more conventional rail tech.

Intrigue's take: The idea behind the BRI was as simple as it was ambitious: Beijing got to deploy its vast savings and absorb its massive industrial overcapacity, while building needed infrastructure and influence abroad.

Many folks in Asia and Africa certainly seem to dig it, and for Indonesia’s ‘infrastructure president’, the new rail link is also nicely on-brand.

But there’ve long been questions around the BRI’s motives and quality, and there’s a sense it’s slowing under its own weight: China has bailed out many BRI projects, and now seems to be paring it back, de-risking it in private, and de-emphasising it in public (at least by initial standards).

Still, the BRI is enshrined in China’s Communist Party charter, and entwined with President Xi’s leadership. So while it’ll evolve, it’s probably here to stay.

Also worth noting:

• The BRI is marking its 10th year anniversary this month.

• China won the Indonesian high-speed rail contract in 2015 after Jakarta backed away from earlier proposals (including from Japan), reportedly on cost grounds.

📰 How newspapers covered…

EU foreign ministers convening in Kyiv

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🇲🇿 Mozambique | Geo-economics

Mozambique settles its ‘tuna bond’ scandal

The Swiss-based bank UBS has agreed to a settlement with Mozambique to resolve Credit Suisse’s infamous ‘tuna bond’ scandal.

The story goes that Credit Suisse, which UBS absorbed in June, was involved in loaning Mozambique $2.4B in 2013 to purchase a fleet of coast guard and fishing vessels from a company in the UAE.

But the lending program was faulty and plagued by corruption among both bankers and shipbuilders, and Mozambique was unable to pay Credit Suisse back. Huge sums of cash went missing.

So, when the IMF and other international lenders found out in 2016, they halted their own lending, and the country’s economy collapsed.

Intrigue’s take: Lenders have power. Multilateral lenders try to intermediate that power across bureaucracies geared (at least in theory) towards transparency and accountability. But this often means things move slowly.

Private lenders, on the other hand, can move quickly, but this Credit Suisse case is a reminder that speed can cost you transparency and accountability.

Also worth noting:

• Financial regulators earlier fined Credit Suisse ~$425M, and the bank pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2021.

• Malaysia’s prime minister is threatening further legal action against Goldman Sachs for its role in the defrauding of a state fund.

🎧 Today on Intrigue Outloud

Could the US invade Mexico?

➕ Extra Intrigue

Here’s what folks have been tweeting about lately.

• 🇮🇹 Italians were all about the “Ryder Cup” following Team Europe’s resounding victory over Team USA in the legendary golf competition.

• 🇦🇺 Both #VoteYes and #VoteNo were trending in Australia as early voting kicked off for the country’s Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.

• 🇸🇿 And #Elections2023 was trending in the absolute monarchy of Eswatini after it held elections for parliamentarians who’ll have no law-making powers.

🗳️ Poll time!

🏆 Award of the day

Sweden’s Nobel Committee announced yesterday (Monday) its decision to award Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on mRNA vaccines. The pair began their joint research after meeting over a copy machine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998.

Yesterday’s poll: Do you think Ukraine can still count on the US for military aid?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👍 Yes, this is only a bump in the road (75%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👎 No, the signs are clear (20%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (5%)

Your two cents:

• ✍️ M: “The real linchpin is whoever is in the White House on Inauguration Day 2025.”

• 👍 F.T.M: “However, this ‘bump in the road’ is troubling as it may cause allies to question just how much U.S. commitment can be counted on.”