Nicaragua, China forge ahead on canal to remake world trade

GargIndia
I have the same comments that I posted elsewhere.

Sinking too much money in a sea channel in a project with great environmental impact is not very logical.

Asia and North America can be easily connected via a tunnel under Bering strait.

Asia is already connected to Africa and to Europe by land.

North America is connected to South America by land.

So it is possible to move goods from one place to other via high capacity trains.

A train can easily move 2000t load today, can can possibly move 4000t-5000t with wider tracks.

The world should be thinking in terms of a global rail transportation system possibly based on a track gauge of 2m or higher.

Such a system will save energy and environment in the long term.

I disagree. The whole plan is highly logical when you understand it's purpose.

Though the Chinese will of course accept tolls from freighters, the primary purpose for the canal is Chinese oil tankers. After all they have been working on many deals to purchase oil claims directly in the gulf of Mexico. So, for them it makes far more sense to build the canal, sail the tankers straight through and onward to china instead of sailing all the way around either South America or around Florida and all of Europe and etc.

As far as transporting by high speed trains on land that would cost a fortune and be a waste. Whether it was done in South America or North America they would more then likely have to pay fees and tariffs to the countries they are transporting across and in South America you would be crossing several nations.With the canal on the other hand if they have jurisdictional control of the canal, then they just sail their tankers right from the gulf of Mexico, straight down and across through the canal and then on to China.

www.bloomberg.com...

www.thechinatimes.com...

www.nytimes.com...

To me a canal makes complete and logical sense from the perspective of the Chinese.

Just my opinion though

reply to post by prisoneronashipoffools


There are many advantage of trains. For example, you can feed the train locally generated power. In a ship, the fuel always has to be loaded at a port.

Temporarily, it may make sense for China. But not in the long term.

China's oil requirements can be met by Asian production. I see no reason why oil has to be transported from America.