The Chinese chequebook

摘要

Dubbed "Mad Maria", the Madeira-Mamore railway was said, with only some exaggeration, to have cost a life for every sleeper laid. Built for booming rubber exports, the 367km (228-mile) line from Porto Velho in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon to the Bolivian border was rendered obsolete by new Asian plantations almost before it opened in 1912. A century later a plan for a much longer railway across the Amazon, from Brazil's Atlantic coast to Peru, is among a sheaf of infrastructure projects that China is offering to finance in Latin America. Li Keqiang, China's prime minister, signed an agreement for a feasibility study for the railway during an eight-day trip through South America that began on May 18th in Brazil and will take him to Colombia, Peru and Chile.