Chinese businessman behind $40 billion Nicaragua canal

“I am a very normal Chinese citizen. I couldn’t be more normal.””

(based on report from Reuters) –

Where is FOX’s outrage when the US security is really challenged?

“Security” in the n20th century is the same as controo of trade routes.  Imagine Iran buyin out Egypts contro of the Suez Canal!

Now it appears that China is going to build a canal through Nicaragua >  This canal, deeper and likely at sea level would obsolete the Panama Canal and give its owners .. and the Nicaraguan government effective control over US trade.

There is ample reason for China tro see this as tit for tat.  Currently the US Navy controls the straits of Malacca.. China’s main trade route to the Middle East and Europe.   Imagine XinHua reporting that Nicaragua was following on by granting China a naval base?

If I were FOX, I would post a Photoshop of Chinese aircraft carriers cruising threough the new canal!

Wang Jing, 40, a newly minted Chinese billionaire is the public face for a project that on paper would challenge the Panama Canal’s monopoly … offering access to China, and th rest of Asia to the Atlantic without any worries about US influence over the Panama Canal.

Wang is supposedly rich via an investment in a Cambodian gold mine.  Quite impressive for a 40 year old from a poor country!  The obvious question is whether the money irt actually Chinese government funds.

Nicaragua’s Congress last week granted Wang’s Cayman Islands-registered HKND company a 50-year concession to develop the canal, following a September agreement with president Daniel Ortega. HKND in turn is a unit of HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co., Ltd, a firm Wang had registered in Hong Kong just a month before the deal with Ortega.

Wang denied any family connection to the Chinese government, military or ruling Communist Party. Connections, or guanxi. The he said that the new canal, likley controlling US trade with the East, would be financed by large Chinese and international banks including China Railway Construction, one of the country’s largest state-owned infrastructure developers,

Wang was explicit – he would maintain at least a 5 percent stake in HKND, and he would remain in charge. He owns 100 percent of HKND.

from Reuters:

Wang said he lived in his native Beijing with his mother, younger brother and daughter. Corporate records show a hotel management company registered to Wang and his brother, Wang Peng, as well as other small entertainment and telecommunications companies under their names.

Reuters was not able to locate the hotel management company at its registered address.

Wang’s nearly 40 percent stake in Xinwei is worth about $1 billion, based on the asking price for a minority share in the firm currently on sale by state-owned Datang Telecommunications.

($1 = 6.1451 Chinese yuan)