China
Shifting from Asia to Latin America, there appears to be in the offing a far more challenging test for China's geopolitics of corridors: the $40 billion plan to create an artificial strait linking Nicaragua's Caribbean and Pacific sides. The futuristic waterway should compete with the century-old Panama Canal, through which 5% of global shipping passes each year.
In June, Wang Jing, the chairman of Hong Kong-based HKND Group, secured from Nicaragua's parliament a concession of 50 years to build the canal in exchange of a minority share of any profits. The inter-oceanic corridor would be completed within 2020 and devised for the passage of 400,000-tonnage vessels. It is planned to be 286 kilometers long, three times the length of the Panama Canal - which, on its part, is subject to an $5.25 billion expansion.
Speaking to the Spanish daily El Pais on June 10, Alberto Aleman, ex-president of the Panama Canal Administration, stressed that the projected Nicaragua Canal was not feasible either technically nor financially. In addition, against a backdrop of global economic slowdown and diminishing growth in demand for container shipping, many experts doubt that investors will be willing to finance the mega-project, not least in light of the emergence of new potential shipping lanes such as that running through an ice-free Arctic Sea.
The Chinese-Nicaraguan joint-venture has also the potential to spawn a diplomatic spat, since the government in Managua maintains formal ties with Taiwan but not with China, which officially considers Taipei to be a breakaway province. The current thawing in relations between Beijing and the Republic of China (Taiwan's official name) could suffer a setback if the Chinese leadership were to try to snatch Nicaragua's diplomatic recognition from Taiwanese hands.
Technical viability and diplomatic conundrums apart, China might be propping up the creation of the Nicaraguan corridor to counterbalance the US control of the Panama Canal. It should not have escaped notice in Beijing that a North Korean vessel was seized in the Panama Canal on July 11 after it was found to be transporting weapons from Cuba.