Slashdot Mirror
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 think you might want to review your history. The first French attempt under La Société internationale du Canal interocéanique almost brought France to its knees. It also was in large part responsible for a disturbing wave of antisemitism that swept France, as Jews were blamed for so much of the corruption.
A Nicaragua canal would in many ways be better than a Panama canal. Although the distance is quite a bit longer, there would be less of a need for locks than are used on the Panama canal.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
It's a one party state where that one party is the Communist Party.
In 1978, Deng Xiaoping started economic reforms that transitioned China from a Maoist country full of subsistence farmers to the economic powerhouse it is today. To be truly Communist, the state has to own pretty much everything. Their new model allows individuals to own lots of things, and profit from them, but the state retains control when they want it.
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.
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...
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 [...]
Which is fine--if you're not one of the millions of people.
Back in the late 90s, my roommate went back to Vietnam to visit some friends. She went back to the house she grew up in and discovered that almost all of the people who lived there had moved away. Why? Because the street they lived on was across from a hospital and it was tough for the ambulances to get in. So the government decided they were going to widen the street. So they told everybody, "Hey, we're widening the street and you may end up losing the front 6 feet from your house. Sorry about that." No wasting money buying property or law-suits or anything like that. Just a "You're fucked. Move on."
Of course, there's not much for disclosure rules, either. So what everybody did was sell their place to the next sucker in line and get out fast. Of course, once those people found out, they did the same thing.
What's funny is that had been going on for three years. The government still hadn't shown up to widen the street. In fact, when she went back in 2012, they still hadn't widened the street.
I kinda like that part of the 5th Amendment to the Constitution about "[...] nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Yeah, it does gum up the works for worthwhile infrastructure projects, I agree. But I'd rather not wake up one morning and find the house that I live in is going to be part of a freeway and I'd better move...