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With Chinese Investment, Nicaraguan Passage Could Dwarf Panama Canal
Nicaragua is now home to the early stages of one of the largest infrastructure projects on earth, plans for which have been raising questions for some time now. In a move that will affect global trade in the long term, "A Chinese telecom billionaire has joined forces with Nicaragua's famously anti-American president to construct a waterway between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to rival the Panama Canal. The massive engineering undertaking would literally slice through Nicaragua and be large enough to accommodate the supertankers that are the hallmark of fleets around the world today." (Here's a related article with a bit more on the project from Wang Jing, the Chinese telecoms entrepreneur now also at the head of the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co.) One potential problem with the canal: disruption of surfing in Nicaragua.
I guess the Chinese need to learn the hard way how expensive and difficult a proposition this will be. The Panama canal nearly bankrupted America.
France, US, Columbia, and Panama. Jungle diseases of workers was a huge problem at beginning.
Wait... Isn't China a Communist country?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My impression is Chinese are thinking big plans for future. Way back in late 1800s early 1900s US was thinking same thing: Panama Canal was a huge project with lots of opportunity for failure. But reaped benefits for decades after. Also Chinese have lots of cash and putting it into big projects (ok some will fail but whatever they will secure strategic advantage). Meanwhile US put lots of resources into backwards countries with not much to show for it.
mfwright@batnet.com
Capitalism and free trade, right guys?
Suck it up!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
He's not anti-American, he's pro what-America-could-be!
When the original Panama Canal was built, there were huge engineering problems that couldn't be easily solved. What will be interesting to see is how quickly this one will be completed with modern technology, modern medicine against tropical diseases, etc. I thought there were plans to widen the existing Panama Canal - were those scrapped?
The other interesting thing to see is China making these huge investments in other countries. Having a competitor for the Panama Canal would really change international trade. I also heard China is investing heavily in Africa and the Middle East, basically for leverage against the US and Europe. It may be one telecom billionaire making the investment, but I'm sure the Chinese government is going to do anything it can to help.
One of the things most people see as a bug but I see as a feature with China is their ability to just do things. There's no debate, no fighting with Congress, etc...they can just tell millions of people to move out of the way of an infrastructure project (e.g. Three Gorges Dam.) That's going to be a huge advantage they have over the West during this century. Another big shift that China is basically just making happen by fiat is the forced urbanization of the country...moving peasant farmers off their land and into cities (which is what those "Ghost Cities" are supposed to be for.) Just look at the fights that happen when someone's land is claimed by eminent domain for a construction project in the US...none of that happens there, and anyone who complains is marginalized.
The Chinese record on environmental impact of these sorts of mammoth projects is not so good. Look at the Three Gorges dam or some of their other big projects as an example. And if they're wrong about the impact on Lake Nicaragua they could screw up the water resources of an entire country, to say nothing of other environmental impacts. For what? So they can expedite extracting resources from Africa (and screwing the environment up there as well) to feed their insatiable appetite?
What I think we are seeing is an end to American dominance in markets, military might, and sphere of influence. Full stop.
America's ride on the Roman Empire train is slowing...
"Nicaragua's famously anti-American president"? Ortega was opposed to the terrorist attacks paid for by the US CIA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair
what Panama is to the US, then fine, go for it.
Best Slashdot Co
. . . or maybe it's "Carlos".
The canal project will bring in more bucks than surfing tourism, so that will pretty much settle it.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The current expansion of the Panama canal goes online next year. "New Panamax" ships are 13,000 TEU vs 5,000 for current Panamax ships. All the important East coast ports have already been or a currently being dredged out to accommodate these ships. This was accomplished quickly and quietly beginning in 2012 when Obama exempted the dredging operations from the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.
Guess they'll be needing another bunch of pencil whipped wavers to dredge out the ports even deeper for the EquadorMax ships, because what China wants China gets.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The Panama Canal - by virtue of being the only alternative to a trip around the tip of South America - can charge passage fees just less than the cost of a trip around South America. Consequently they make a huge profit margin off of operating it. A quick google search says it brings in about $2 billion/yr, but only costs about $600 million/yr to operate. So they've got a massive 233% profit margin.
Add a second canal, and suddenly they're not competing with a trip around South America. They're competing with each other. Unless they collude together to fix the prices so that they're essentially the same (divide traffic 50/50, which might actually be a good thing since I hear wait times at the Panama Canal can be a week or more), the price is going to drop to slightly higher than what it costs them to operate the more expensive canal. That is the nature of competition. e.g. If the profit margin drops to a still-high 50%, profit from the current level of traffic would be just $300m/yr, and it'll take them 167 years to recoup the $50b construction cost even if they were able to borrow that $50b interest-free. Since the Panama Canal is essentially paid for, the Nicaraguan canal would probably have higher costs and thus slimmer margins, and will likely take centuries to pay for its construction.
A Nicaraguan canal would have the advantage of allowing passage of larger-than-Panamax ships (ships designed so their width barely fits through the Panama Canal). But again, if they try to charge significantly more for such ships, operators will simply continue building Panamax ships. Any surcharge they add on has to be less than the money operators would save by using larger-than-Panamax ships. (Significantly more since such ships would have to be built in the first place.)
It'll be great for the rest of the world - cheaper transport costs, more capacity, faster travel. But could end up tanking both the Nicaraguan and Panamanian economies.
What are the chances that once it's built, the U.S. will find that Nicaragua is not democratic enough to operate it "independently"?
A quick look at google maps and I estimate
Panama is about 40 miles across and about 150 feet (65 k, 40 m) of altitude to overcome.
Nicaragua is about 150 miles and about 650 feet (240 k, 200 m) of altitude to overcome. The altitude difference would add a lot to operating expenses. They'd have to pump a lot of water to locks about 600 feet higher than in Panama.
"I know a place
Where you're all going to go
They'll pay you to kill
If You're eighteen years old
First You'll need a haircut
And then some new clothes
They'll stick you in a jungle
To play G.I. Joe
CHORUS:
You fight for democracy
And the "American Way"
But you're not in your country
"What am I doing here?" you say
But now it's too late
You're entering Managua
If you had brought your surfboard
You could surf Nicaragua
Video here
Finding God in a Dog
problems dragged it out
If the Nicaragua canal does not contain any locks, as does the Panama canal, one particular sea snake species, Pelamis platura , will almost certainly enter the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean where there are currently no sea snakes. So far, Pelamis and other sea snake species have been prevented from entering the Atlantic due to the cold waters in the north and south, the higher salinity of the Red Sea and the system of locks and fresh water of the Panama Canal. If the isthmus of Central America is breached by a lockless canal, I see no reason why P. platura (just this one snake species) and many other unwanted tropical denizens of the Pacific will not make it through to the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, while many from the Caribbean will get through to the Atlantic. In other words, without any locks, this will be a recipe for an environmental disaster. Let's hope I'm wrong and they're planning to build a minimum set of locks anyway.
So you love you some dictatorship. Noted.
The panama canal is already undergoing expansion and will be able to handle all but a few of the largest ship sizes and should be completed in about a year or so. Most east coast ports aren't dredged deep enough to handle the megaships anyway,and by the time they are, its likely the northern passages around Canada are expected to be open due to global warming. The biggest ships are only deployed on asia-europe routes not because of accessibility but because of demand. It also isn't much further of a trip from Asia to NJ via the Suez Canal rather than the Panama canal.
So if the Nicaraguan Canal costs only $50 billion, (the current estimate is $49 Billion), then assuming terrorists blew up the Panama canal, then maybe Nicaraguan Canal would be $1 billion a year, also know as a 2% return on investment. It would take 50 years just to break even, let alone earn a profit.
Good luck with that business plan.
Good luck
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
yellow fever
So schedules will slide because the Nicaraguans are all busy humping the Chinese construction workers?
A 10 seconds look at the geographic situation of Nicaragua is enough to realize there is no way to do this withouth destroying thousands of square meters of forest and endangering a freshwater lake that is bigger than Delaware.
My other signature is a car
Lake Nicaragua was considered for a canal even before Panama. The idea has been picked up and dropped many times since, which is not to say that it won't succeed this time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
US : 1900's Caribbean :: China : 2000's Pacific.
The United Fruit company didn't fuck around.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Doesn't have the same ring to it. I can see why they picked Panama for the first one.
So don't worry, our government could be weak and our military power could be misapplied. But we have some really cunning bankers who would steal the loin cloth of Papua New Guineans if they could make a dollar or two. They will steal this spanking new Chinese built canal from Nicaragua for us. Some two decades later we the tax payers will compensate the victims of their greed.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I loved using a city on an isthmus to make ship travel faster in Civ. I missed that in MoM; had to resort to supply chains, magic roads, or summoning circle + word of recall
The lake they plan to use is above sea level. They would need at locks on either side of it to use the lake.
The Panama Canal was dug around 1910. In 1910, about 38% of Americans were employed in agriculture... now it is under 2%. In other words, humankind is radically better at things like "moving dirt."
This argument makes no sense whatever.
Agricultural employment in the states is under 2% because we are "radically" better at things like farming.
Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) in China was last measured at 34.80 in 2011, according to the World Bank.
Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) in China
By July 1, 1914, a total of 238,845,587 cubic yards had been excavated during the American construction era. Together with some 30,000,000 cubic yards excavated by the French, this gives a total of around 268,000,000 cubic yards, or more than four times the volume originally estimated for de Lesseps' sea level canal.
END OF CONSTRUCTION
i know its offtopic, but adding the "anti american" thing is redundant. the US has a well documented 12 year history of funding and training contra rebels to burn down hospitals and schools in an attempt to dissuade the country from communism and socialism. The big news here is that american regional power does not appear to have had any ability to slow or stop this project, whereas 30 years ago a south american country partnering with an openly communist superpower would have likely put an aircraft carrier in the region.
Good people go to bed earlier.
What an insult to native Caribbean predators. As if we wouldn't eat these snakes for breakfast and then move into the Pacific. Your desire to maintain biological stasis is both misguided and impossible. Survival must be earned, and that means successfully competing against other species. It is easy to sit at the top of the food-chain and deny other species the opportunity for world domination. What you call an environmental disaster, I call a shot in the arm of biological evolution.
And all of the discussion here does not consider that with melting icecaps the northern route is going to negate the need for much of this trans America traffic. Perhaps China wants to trade with Brazil?
sad news for you, must humans do not gives a shit about what sea snakes live where, and to them your "disaster" just means "things will be different"
Before the US picked up the abandoned French effort for the Panama canal, the US was seriously considering building the Nicaragua canal*.
The Nicaraguan government was historically worried about British colonial aspirations in the area and basically invited the US in as a preemptive action to deter the British from action. By 1884 a treaty was negotiated to build the Nicaraguan canal and a US based canal company established to build it, but the company didn't accomplish too much before going bankrupt. The US was going to restart work on Nicaraguan canal, but whole Panama thing changed the US direction. It was only after the US financed the Panamanian revolution and the newly formed country of Panama decided to accept the terms of the previously negotiated Hay–Herrán Treaty (not actually ratified by Colombia) which discounted the French bankruptcy sale price from $100M to $40 to take over the French project.
Interest revived in in 1914 with the Bryan–Chamorro Treaty, but that never panned out either...
* see Sánchez-Merry Treaty and read this book...
The lake they plan to use is above sea level. They would need at locks on either side of it to use the lake.
Oops, I missed that. Running a set of locks so large will require a huge amount of fresh water, and Lake Nicaragua is much larger than Gatun Lake in Panama, but I still wonder if they will have enough to prevent the lake from slowly draining. If not, I reasoned, a lockless approach, bypassing the lake, would be the only solution... and an environmental disaster.
From what I've read on this, the environmental damage caused by this project will be massive. The plans call for trenching into a fresh water lake and back out on the other end. Kind of like "hey lets mix 2 salt water bodies with a big fresh water lake and see what happens?".
Bad things. That's what happens.
So the Chinese are going to build something like we built a hundred years ago. Am I supposed to really give a rat's ass?
What next, landing on the moon? A black president? Yawn.
So much for the Gulf Stream and warm weather for points north!
We have had several exchanges with Chinese government officials that do much the same things we do. There are some fundamental differences. No one owns land in China, it is all nationalized. However you are able to get a lease, and things like an 80 year lease is common. Think your current lifetime, just don't think you get to pass your loot onto your kids necessarily, particularly if you abuse the resource. Here a lease is typically about 20 years.
Anyway the mechanics are much the same, it is the implementation and those differences that influence changes. For example, if I am using a piece of land for some purpose say a factory, or a farm, or whatever, and do a crappy job of it, once the lease is up, it probably will not be given to me again, but someone else who might use the resource better. If I own it, I can more less waste that piece of land however I wish. Same goes for control, land might be leased for a specific purpose and no other, where if I own the land I can more less do whatever I want. Which might be in my best interests, but maybe no so much anyone around me. On private land government still tries to exert some control in terms of zoning and the like but it isn't quite the same thing.
In a current example, I saw an "environmental group" whose concern was the loss of prime agricultural farmland in a centralized location to urban areas protest, lobby and win against a mining operation and successfully shut it down. However they did not ask that the land be protected by establishing long term zoning only allowing for agricultural use. The reason being that the group is really a land owners association, where farmers want to sell their land for millions to urban residential developers to create sprawling suburbs, which would more effectively destroy more farmland than any sized mine.
In the Chinese model the government would say FU, no more land for you, only if you plan to farm it! In ours, the farmland will get covered by 3000sq ft houses and forever be unusable. In our model land use and worth is controlled largely by market forces... i.e. close to urban area, worth X as farmland, but worth Y as residential, if up to individual, they will sell it to Y, as they get the most out of it. So China in a sense still has what used to be called a control economy, where land use and value is not wholly (or mostly) determined by market values, but by say a centralized authority that may decided having a quality farmland close to an urban area is worth more to everyone than simply a short term $$$ figure. That is not to say that it is totally without consequence, the same here with municipal governments trying to exert some control. Only that it is very weighed one way here, and another way in China.
OK, so who can come up with a palindrome that uses the words 'canal' and 'Nicaragua'?
... and there was a broad consensus among both the ex-pats and the Nicaraguans I knew that a canal through Nicaragua would be an unqualified ecological disaster. It would cut a wide swath through the little remaining virgin forest there, not to mention clearing out many of the remaining indigenous communities. They apparently also want to build an airport, an oil pipeline, multiple "free-trade" zones, and a second deep-water port. I can't believe that surfing is considered more important than all this.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
How long before Nicaragua nationalizes the canal?
It wasn't 'semi-finished'.
The French had excavated some 30,000,000 cu yd in a futile effort to build a fantasy sea level canal in the 13 years they worked there. The US excavated some 170,000,000 cu yards in 10 years PLUS put into place the entire lock system and the massive Gatun dam (largest in the world at the time) and Gatun lake, which was the largest artificial lake in the world. Not to mention other innovations like figuring out how to control diseases like malaria and yellow fever in the region.
The idea that the French did anything worthwhile at the Panama Canal is preposterous and completely counter to the actual facts.
You have a good point, but I still think it's more that the U.S. isn't interested in stopping or slowing this project, and Nicaragua is pandering to a nominally communist superpower.
And why should the U.S. want to stop it? They haven't had any ownership interest in the Panama Canal in almost 20 years, and U.S. ships pay Panama's monopoly transit fees (not to mention sometimes having to face long waiting times, apparently).
Are they planning to use the nuclear explosives that we once considered using to cut a sea-level canal through Nicaragua?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
so the rain forests, and whatever all the protestors care about when blocking all western projects, will be completely ignored when it's the Chinese doing it. Rah rah rah! gooooooo China!
Any bets on how few actual locals are brought in and paid decent wages, as opposed to shipping in good loyal Han workers?
If the started playing around with nuclear shaped charges I bet they'd still be forgiven by the greens.
Ironically, it was Plowshare that also proposed a Nicaraguan canal cut with nuclear explosives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare
>whereas 30 years ago a south american country partnering with an openly communist superpower would have likely put an aircraft carrier in the region.
Today, the only way to counteract china, middle east, etc. is to partnership with allies a.k.a Europe. But U.S. threats Europe like an enemy (spying, lying, manipulating, ...) that's just plain wrong. I won't cry on this state of affair, you created your very own enemies all around the world and did not learn the lesson, starting again with the last people still being friendly with you.
that wouldn't have something to do with our support for death squads that torture nuns and labor leaders, would it ?
If we fuck up the ecosystem in which everything depends on everything else we might be one of the species going extinct before a new, different equilibrium is reached. Nature doesn't give a shit about where humans live, if they live.
I'm not much of an environmentalist and whenever someone proclaims that they're sorting garbage because they think "long term" and that I should too, I tend to reply that I do. In fact so long term that I acknowledge that the sun will implode one day. However, I draw the line at fucking things up so bad that we're completely unable to unfuck them because as long as we have the capabilities needed, it's just a matter of cost. It seems to me that merging the ecosystems in two oceans like that shouldn't be done unless we're really, really sure that it won't affect fishing. I mean, it's not that far-fetched that the sea snakes in question will prey on species Z but not be prey to the predator that has so far preyed on Z and that will suddenly face competition which will then reduce all populations above it in the food chain. If fishing is affected, it will destroy livelihoods in an area with large, poor and poorly educated populations that have unstable governments and that are known to emigrate North to get a better life. Species go extinct all the time and have gone extinct long before we were around so the petitions to save insect X or such are lost on me but I consider the human species different because I belong to it. IF the link between the underwater food chain and human financial chain is too strong in the area, messing with the ocean might light a fire we can't put out. Hence, I want reasonable certainty.
From WIKI: "With an elevation of 32.7 metres (107 ft) above sea level, the lake reaches a depth of 26 metres (85 ft). It is intermittently joined by the Tipitapa River to Lake Managua."
So the base of the lake is above sea level. It would be cheaper to put in locks than to dig out the bottom of the lake.
If you seriously believe China is communist you just busted my retardometer.
Is it so unreasonable for us to ask you to shut the fuck up sometimes? You often argue just to be arguing. You love to play devil's advocate. I understand web forums are here mainly for one's entertainment but notice I said "one's" and not "your". You mostly come across as an annoying 3 year old who just loves to repeatedly scream the same noisy bullshit at everyone constantly and we're finally tired of it. Sit the fuck down and shut the hell up already while the grown ups talk. If I knew where you were in real life, I'd spank your bratty ass and put you in the corner!
China is nominally a Republic too.
In real life it means squat.
The ultimate result of your environmental cage match is to have all the species on Earth thrown together and whatever wins gets to be everywhere on Earth. It's a disaster for diversity, but you'll be happy because the most fit species is the one species left.
The United States should do this, from Texas to California along the boarder It would create jobs, with the additional benefits being, we can use the dirt to bolster eroding reef islands, eliminate the need for a fence along the boarder, and have revenue from the freighters, If we build it deep enough and wide enough for multiple super freighters to safely navigate the canal, the weight of the water would make it very costly and need major engineering to dig illegal tunnels under the canal to smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants across the boarder. Also from the toll fees we could build security outposts to monitor the shipping lanes, as well as add US Coast Guard presence. which would mean more jobs. Also if we build it so that both sides are on us soil we would not have to share the revenues. Also after the canal pays for it self the government can have another source of revenue to do more public works like a cross country high speed rail. As far as the environmental impact as far as I know there are no 3 headed calves being born from the results of the Panama Canal.
At that time that canal was part of Columbia.
Wrong. Columbia was a couple of billion years earlier.
Again:
sad news for you, must humans do not gives a shit about what sea snakes live where, and to them your "disaster" just means "things will be different"
"One of the things most people see as a bug but I see as a feature with China is their ability to just do things.....they can just tell millions of people to move out of the way of an infrastructure project"
Your opinion might vary depending on whether your home is in the path of a development. For some people, having the ability to halt the development and have the decision whether or not to commence destruction of your property arbitrated by a neutral third party is more important than rapid development of large scale projects.
This is exactly what the human species has achieved (aquatic environments aside). We've killed a lot of species on the way, but we're nowhere near zero genetic diversity, even within our own species. You can pretend there isn't a persistent knock-down drag-out biological war happening, but that won't make it end.
There was an American plan to build a canal across Nicaragua, before the Panama canal plan. But, a stamp put an end to it: Dr. Arthur Delaney, writing in the November 12, 1977, issue of Stamp Collector tells the story. While a Frenchman named Philippe Banua-Varilla was lobbying Congress to go with Panama, they had their eyes on Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan government was willing and insisted that its few volcanos were dormant and earthquakes non-existent. The volcano Momotombo, right on the route of the proposed Nicaraguan canal, was erupting violently even as the US Senate debated! But they were not deterred. But then, wrote Delaney, just as Banua-Varilla was to leave Washington a defeated man, a friend gave him a Nicaraguan stamp of the 1900 issue showing Momotombo in action. Inspired by this, he is said to have made the rounds of Washington stamp dealers and brought enough to send one to each Senator with a note pointing out that this was an official Nicaraguan admission that its volcanoes were indeed very active! The Senate voted, and the Nicaraguan canal proposal was defeated. http://www.stampnotes.com/Note...
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. ~ Mark Twain
First of all, lets look at some maps. Go on. Click on some maps. What continent is Nicaragua in folks? Central America, a bit north of Panama. Look at all the green. That country has tons of nature preserves! Look at it all. Find yourself a nice easy route through that country as if you're planning a canal from one coast to the other. Compare it to the length of the Panama Canal which is easily seen by the roads marked beside it. Any way you slice it the distance is like 3-4x as long! And it crosses thru a big lake or a a huge animal sanctuary! This is going to mess up the landscape a bit folks, and between my thoughts of "unnecessary" and "crazy capitalist pigs" I can't come up with a reason for doing any of it. The Panama Canal is important. Saves journeys around the whole of South America or North America, each of which reach toward the poles and icy passages and dangerous sailing. Why do we need two? What military advantage could it possibly serve if the enemies of America had this canal at the start of the war? It won't last long. If the US can't control it with their military and use it for themselves, they'll just drop a couple nukes at either end and watch all those farmlands flood with salt water. I think this is a huge undertaking with little to no real gain.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
What makes you think the chinese will lend you the money to do this? Or even run out themselves in the first place.
Who's talking about borrowing any money from anyone? What part of cunning Wall street bankers pulling levers of influence you don't get? They will steal the required money from the Chinese. Probably with active collusion with the top Chinese government officials. If there is one thing our banksters are good at, it is using influence over government to steal money from the tax payers. And one thing Chinese, Indian, Russian, Brazilian governments are good at is in stealing money from their citizens. It is a match made in heaven.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The chinese communist party is on its last straw of survival, facing stress from:
1. external opposite forces from all other countries in the world.
2. internal pressure from all chinese places e.g. mainland, hong kong, taiwan, xinjiang, macau etc.
3. its own economy no more development from absence of law and moral.
4. its inner problems all surfacing e.g. debt, lack of soft power, no morals whatsoever.