China’s Ambitious Rail Projects Crash Into Harsh Realities in Latin America
By SIMON ROMERO

LUCAS DO RIO VERDE, Brazil — The ambitions are dizzying, some of the grandest in Latin America since thousands of laborers perished building railways through the forbidding jungles of Brazil more than a century ago.

China has sought to build a “dry canal” in the form of a railway across Colombia, linking the Caribbean to the Pacific. Chinese investors announced another huge venture in Honduras, two ports and a 375-mile railroad from sea to sea. Then this June, China announced yet another megarailway — nearly 10 times as long — across Brazil and Peru, stretching from one coast of South America to the other.

But across the region, one large Chinese rail venture after another has come crashing against the hard realities of Latin American politics, resistance from environmental groups, and a growing wariness toward China. While China boasts of its rail initiatives around the world, it has often been stymied here in Latin America, reflecting how even China’s formidable ambitions have limits.

Now, new worries over China’s economic growth are raising more doubts about the blitz of what China calls its “railroad diplomacy,” as parts of Latin America reel from their dependence on China.

The enormous twin-ocean railroad across Brazil and Peru, in particular, “will be a crucial test of China’s mettle as a global power and the potential for greater acquiescence in South America to the designs that China has on our resources,” said José Eustáquio Diniz Alves, a Brazilian scholar.

“We’re experiencing the downside of our overreliance on China now that the opaque Chinese economy is in flux,” he added. “Imagine what will happen if this railway somehow advances, bringing with it environmental devastation and even more leverage for China in our affairs.”

More than 100 years ago, Americans were among the foreigners who rolled into the heart of South America with ambitious plans to build railways. The ruins of their grand designs for the Brazilian Amazon, called the Devil’s Railway because of the thousands of workers who died building it, are a testament to the dangers of relying too heavily on commodity exports.

Officials slowly abandoned the railroad, parts of which are now swallowed by jungle, after rubber prices collapsed generations ago. These days, China is the one suffering an array of setbacks in railroad projects across the region, at a time when the demand for Latin America’s commodities — like soybeans, iron ore, copper and oil — has slowed.

Last November, Mexico abruptly canceled a Chinese-led bid to build a $4.3 billion high-speed rail system after accusations that the Mexican government had favored contractors who were part of the consortium.

In Honduras, two years have passed since Chinese investors announced the railway linking the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. Yet Miguel Servellón, an official with the state agency promoting the project, said it was “still a long way from happening,” listing obstacles like a complex environmental approval process.

In another project aimed at finding an alternative to the Panama Canal, the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, said four years ago that Colombia and China had a plan that was “quite advanced” to build a railway linking the Pacific to the Caribbean. But the mood has changed considerably since then.

“It’s a subject that was mentioned in 2011 and subsequently had minimal relevance,” said Daniela Sánchez, the director of the Colombia-China Chamber of Commerce.

In Venezuela, Chinese companies actually broke ground on a 290-mile high-speed railway, part of a grandiose plan by President Hugo Chávez, to “rebalance” the population away from the coast.

But while Venezuela’s government boasted that passenger service would start in 2012, the project has been fraught for years with work stoppages and money shortfalls on the Venezuelan side. The Chinese authorities say that more than half of the railway has been built, though Venezuelan news media reported in June that work camps on the route had been abandoned.

“The process would be faster if we had abundant capital,” Liang Enguang, deputy general manager of the China Railway Engineering Corporation’s Venezuelan unit, told reporters.

An even bigger project floated by a Chinese telecommunications tycoon, a 172-mile canal across Nicaragua, intended as a rival to the Panama Canal, has been met with broad skepticism about its feasibility as well as protests by farmers living along the proposed route.

Despite the obstacles, China has pressed ahead with the twin-ocean railway across Brazil and Peru, building on trade between China and Latin America that surged to $285 billion in 2014, from $12 billion in 2000, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund.

Lucas do Rio Verde, a farming outpost of 70,000 people, could find itself almost in the middle of the proposed 3,300-mile route, raising hopes that it could be transformed into a major agricultural shipping hub.

But in the shadows of the grain silos towering over soybean fields and the meat-processing plant here, the responses have often involved more shrugging than jumping for joy.

“I don’t doubt that China has the money and know-how to make this happen,” said Ricardo Tomczyk, the president of an industry group representing soybean farmers. But “we know that Brazil’s bureaucracy is more formidable than building a railway across the peaks of the Andes.”

More enthusiastic supporters of the venture argue that the recent flux in the Chinese economy is merely a blip in China’s rise in Latin America. Though some economists have noted the steady decline in China’s foreign currency reserves, Chinese banks and engineering companies are still expected to have ample funds for the $10 billion project, they say, despite the recent drop in China’s currency, the renminbi.

In fact, some political analysts say that the decline in commodity prices and Brazil’s stumbling economy could actually enhance China’s bargaining power, helping it to persuade the local authorities to accept Chinese terms for the railway.

“Barring a more intense crisis in China, Chinese investors still wield enormous financial clout, far more than the strained players in the Brazilian market,” said André Nassif, an economist at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, an elite university in Rio de Janeiro.

Still, political leaders, farmers and environmental activists are eyeing China’s difficulties in completing railroads elsewhere in Latin America. They point out Brazil’s particularly nettlesome bureaucracy, its laws prohibiting China from hiring its own laborers, a web of auditing courts, and the capacity of dozens of different prosecutors to cripple megaprojects with lawsuits.

“On top of all that, we have a very fragile government,” said Otaviano Pivetta, the mayor of Lucas do Rio Verde, noting the push to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, who supports the Chinese railway project. “Sure, I’d like this to happen, but we cannot ignore the obstacles.”

China already outranks the United States as Brazil’s largest trading partner. But while Chinese demand for commodities fueled the growth of farming cities like Lucas do Rio Verde, exports of soybeans and corn are still largely taken to ports on deplorable public roads like BR-163, a 1,097-mile route cutting across the Amazon.

Stretches of the road remain unpaved, raising freight costs. When it rains, some truckers along muddy stretches simply find themselves stuck for days.

Scholars of China’s ties to Latin America say the proposed railway would go well beyond cutting shipping costs, reflecting Beijing’s efforts to secure raw materials, improve its food security and find new markets for Chinese engineering and rail firms at a time when the nation’s economic growth is slowing.

“The Chinese don’t fully trust that the U.S. won’t try to restrict them at certain strategic choke points,” said R. Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the United States Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, pointing to China’s reliance on shipping lanes like the Panama Canal.

Some political leaders in both Brazil and Peru have welcomed the Chinese proposal, gauging its seriousness by the fact that Li Keqiang, the Chinese prime minister, personally promoted the project while visiting both countries in May. Chinese officials agreed to deliver a feasibility report in about a year.

The governors of three states in the Brazilian Amazon that the railroad would traverse are voicing support for the railway. But even some who stand to benefit from it acknowledge the vexing array of challenges.

“I don’t want to be pessimistic about their railroad, but it will be very hard,” said Marino Franz, a former mayor of Lucas do Rio Verde.

Powerful political and business figures, whose river ports and soybean processing centers could be threatened by the railway, are already blasting the Chinese venture.

“I don’t believe in it,” Senator Blairo Maggi, a soybean farmer and former governor of Mato Grosso State told his counterparts in the Senate.

Beyond the opposition among powerful Brazilian agribusiness interests, environmental groups are also marshaling resistance to the railway, claiming that it could accelerate deforestation in the Amazon River basin.

Brazil’s labor laws, which make it considerably difficult for companies to hire foreign workers, are another potential obstacle, in contrast to railroads in African countries that the Chinese have built with their own laborers.

Then there is the record of large infrastructure failures in Brazil to consider. One mega-project after another has been stalled or abandoned in recent years, often because of corruption, lack of money, bureaucratic hurdles, cost overruns, or all of the above.

“With all due respect, the African countries are a little bit more desperate,” said Kevin Gallagher, a scholar at Boston University who studies China’s forays into Latin America. “In Latin America, there’s more red tape, some of it good, some of it bad.”

Of course, other Chinese infrastructure projects have made progress in Latin America, helping reshape the region. In Argentina, where Chinese companies are upgrading a dilapidated cargo network, imports of railroad materials and trains from China reached around $700 million in 2014, up from $50 million in 2011. In Ecuador, state-owned Chinese banks have already put nearly $11 billion into the country, building a dam, roads, highways, bridges, and hospitals.

Some in Brazil argue that Chinese companies are learning from their successes and setbacks. Here in Brazil, Sinopec, the Chinese energy producer, built a $1.3 billion gas pipeline. Now Brazilian officials are investigating claims of gross overbilling in its construction.

With Brazil’s economy ailing, some powerful officials are signaling that they may be willing to accept China’s proposal, while also suggesting that the railway could be pursued with a less ambitious, piecemeal approach.

“The Twin-Ocean Railway could be done in parts,” Nelson Barbosa, Brazil’s planning minister, said in testimony before the Senate, emphasizing in particular two stretches where farming groups have clamored for railroads.

Mr. Gallagher said the railway ranks among the largest infrastructure projects in Latin America in the last century.

“China will have to race up the learning curve for this to succeed,” he said. “If the Chinese can’t make this happen, then no one can.”

中南美不甩大陸 「鐵路外交」成笑話

一百多年前，美國人和其他外國人在被視為禁地的巴西亞馬遜雨林建造鐵路，賠上了成千上萬鐵路工人的性命，因而有「魔鬼鐵路」之稱。今年六月，中國大陸也宣布將建一條貫穿亞馬遜雨林的「兩洋鐵路」，但外界並不看好。事實上，大陸在中南美洲的鐵路計畫一個接一個喊停，北京的「鐵路外交」在拉丁美洲吃不開。

紐約時報報導，大陸試圖在哥倫比亞建一條「乾運河」，用鐵路連接加勒比海和太平洋；陸資也宣布在宏都拉斯建造六百公里長的鐵路，連接兩港口；今年六月，大陸又宣布建造另一條近十倍長的鐵路，橫越巴西和秘魯的「兩洋鐵路」。

但大陸在中南美洲的鐵路計畫屢遭挫敗，原因包括當地的政治現實、環保團體的抗議、人民對大陸勢力的介入懷有戒心。現在，大陸經濟成長的隱憂讓拉丁美洲降低對大陸的依賴，更令人質疑北京的「鐵路外交」攻勢。

巴西學者迪尼茲說：「兩洋鐵路將是大陸拚全球強權的重要考驗。」

一百多年前的「魔鬼鐵路」因橡膠價格下跌而被棄置，部分已被雨林吞沒。今天，拉丁美洲的大宗商品出口需求減緩，包括黃豆、鐵砂、銅和石油，大陸在此地區的鐵路計畫也遭到一連串挫敗。

墨西哥去年十一月突然宣布取消陸資標下的43億美元高鐵計畫；陸資兩年前宣布的宏都拉斯鐵路計畫至今沒有動靜，官員說，卡在複雜的環境評估過程。

哥倫比亞總統桑托斯四年前宣布要與大陸建一條鐵路，取代巴馬拿運河，但之後很少再提起。

大陸在委內瑞拉建的鐵路已動工，委國宣稱2012年可通車，但因委國資金不足停工。大陸聲稱已建好一半以上，但委國媒體報導，沿途的工作站已被棄置。

位在籌建的「兩洋鐵路」正中央的巴西農業市鎮韋爾德河畔的盧卡斯，希望能成為農產品運輸中心。但當地農民把鐵路計畫當做笑話看。黃豆產業公會主席托姆齊克說：「我相信大陸有錢和技術建成，但我們更了解巴西的官僚比建造橫越安地斯山頂峰的鐵路還難搞。」

巴西法律禁止大陸雇用大陸勞工在巴西施工，加上法院的監督，檢察官有能力用官司癱瘓大型工程。

韋爾德河畔的盧卡斯市市長皮維特說：「更重要的是，我們的政府很脆弱。」支持這項鐵路工程的巴西總統羅塞芙可能遭到彈劾。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/americas/chinas-ambitious-rail-projects-crash-into-harsh-realities-in-latin-america.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/business/20151008/c08latam/zh-hant/

2015-10-05．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯田思怡