Hong Kong-based company to build a 278-km Nicaragua Canal

• On December 22, 2014, Chinese construction will begin in Nicaragua of a $50 billion inter-oceanic canal to rival Panama’s.
• The route near the Costa Rican border, chosen by the company and the government, is 278km long, with 105km of that in Lake Nicaragua. If realized, the canal will be up to 30 meters deep and up to 520 meters wide.

278-km Nicaragua Canal to rival Panama’s is part of China's global infrastructural links When completed as expected in five years, the Nicaragua Canal will be able to accommodate the world's largest container ships now able to dock only at the world's deepest container port - Lianyungang outside Shanghai.

This is one of several trans-continental infrastructural links of epic proportions converging on China as a global trade and transportation hub. The other is a monumental railway project linking the port of Shenzhen to Kunming in western China and onwards to Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Iran, and then across Turkey to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Known as the “third Eurasian land bridge”, the proposed high-speed-rail network will span 15,000 kilometres, a much shorter and less geopolitically vulnerable journey than that by sea via the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Malacca.

President Daniel Ortega (left) and Chinese businessman Wang Jing hold up a concession agreement for the construction of a multibillion-dollar canal at the Casa de los Pueblos in Managua.