Since a Chinese firm last year won the concession to build, design, and oversee a $40 billion canal in Nicaragua to rival Panama’s, controversy has surrounded the project. While it is expected to juice up the economy of the second poorest nation in the Americas (as a recent English-language Xinhua headline points out), a lack of transparency along with China’s track record of economic influence and environmental impact has critics concerned. Reuters’ Gabriel Stargardter reports on the symbolic groundbreaking of the massive project, which is set to be in operation by 2020:

The groundbreaking was largely symbolic, as work began on a road designed to accommodate machinery needed to build a port for the canal on the Central American country’s Pacific coast. Nicaragua’s government says the proposed 172-mile (278-km) canal, due to be operational by around 2020, would raise annual economic growth to more than 10 percent. The canal could also give China a major foothold in Central America, a region long dominated by the United States, which completed the Panama Canal a century ago. […] More than a year since it was first announced, the project faces widespread skepticism, with questions still open about who will provide financing, how seriously it will affect Lake Nicaragua and how much land will be expropriated for it. [Source]

At the South China Morning Post, Partick Boehler reports on local protests against the canal over pollution concerns, unfair land compensation, and fears that the project will disproportionately benefit China:

Viva Nicaragua!” they were shouting in videos shared by activists, expressing their fears about land seizures and pollution caused by the infrastructure project led by a Hong Kong-based firm. Protesters said they had so far only blocked vehicles carrying employees of the HKND Group, the company holding the concession to build and operate the canal. Chinese surveyors have been assaulted, according to Nicaraguan media reports. “This project will bring no benefit to the people of Nicaragua, it will only benefit the Chinese,” said Danilo Lorio, a 24-year old leading the protests near San Miguelito on the western shore of Lake Nicaragua. “The compensation offer for our lands is ridiculous.” [Source]

While surveying the many causes for concern over the project in a report for the Washington Post, Ishaan Tharoor focuses on the political unease surrounding Wang Jing and his Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND):