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The four-lane highway leading out of the Sri Lankan town of Hambantota gets so little traffic that it sometimes attracts more wild elephants than automobiles. The pachyderms are intelligent — they seem to use the road as a jungle shortcut — but not intelligent enough, alas, to appreciate the pun their course embodies: It links together a series of white elephants, i.e. boondoggles, built and financed by the Chinese. Beyond the lonely highway itself, there is a 35,000-seat cricket stadium, an almost vacant $1.5 billion deepwater port and, 16 miles inland, a $209 million jewel known as "the world's emptiest international airport."
Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, the second-largest in Sri Lanka, is designed to handle a million passengers per year. It currently receives about a dozen passengers per day. Business is so slow that the airport has made more money from renting out the unused cargo terminals for rice storage than from flight-related activities. In one burst of activity last year, 350 security personnel armed with firecrackers were deployed to scare off wild animals, the airport's most common visitors.
Projects like Mattala are not driven by local economic needs but by remote stratagems. When Sri Lanka's 27-year civil war ended in 2009, the president at the time, Mahinda Rajapaksa, fixated on the idea of turning his poor home district into a world-class business and tourism hub to help its moribund economy. China, with a dream of its own, was happy to oblige. Hambantota sits in a very strategic location, just a few miles north of the vital Indian Ocean shipping lane over which more than 80 percent of China's imported oil travels. A port added luster to the "string of pearls" that China was starting to assemble all along the so-called Maritime Silk Road.
Sadly, no travelers came, only the bills. The Mattala airport has annual revenues of roughly $300,000, but now it must repay China $23.6 million a year for the next eight years, according to Sri Lanka's Transport and Civil Aviation Ministry. Over all, around 90 percent of the country's revenues goes to servicing debt. Even a new president who took office in 2015 on a promise to curb Chinese influence succumbed to financial reality.
Empire building is expensive, even when you're Chinese, and is especially expensive for the junior partners in the process.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:32AM (9 children)
Catalonia were the ones paying to have traffic. And the ones that wanted an airport there (Lleida). Well, every fucking regional president wanted one airport. Catalonia credit rating is so bad they have to get bonds via the central goverment.
No, a bunch of politicians wants to secede to have their own little feud, Middle Ages style. They even keep talking about Països Catalans, with the purpose anexing Valencia, Baleares and any other thing they can get their hand in, like part of Aragon. Do as I say, not as I do. http://www.abc.es/espana/aragon/abci-planea-unos-paises-catalanes-confederales-incluyan-aragon-201709060901_noticia.html [www.abc.es]
It's a fucking circus. While important things like depending less in foreign oil always get the back seat (hint: Spain has a lot of sun and coast... also wind, and mountain zones to pump water up...).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:38AM (5 children)
Is there enough water to pump up?
No, really, I'm just asking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:14PM (4 children)
Atlantic ocean of the northwest coast and the mediterranean on the east coast.
Pumped hydro works with salt water as well as fresh water.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:16PM
Or in case if only Catalonia, it is the northernmost region on the east coast
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:27PM (2 children)
Not quite. Corrosion happens even with concrete pipes [wikipedia.org] - the metal ones even more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:58PM (1 child)
Which is why sane designs uses plastic and stainless steel pipes [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:59PM
Shit, that stuff costs an extra .84 / foot! Who's gonna pay for that? The money fairies?
Long term planning is for suckers!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:16AM
Meh, I've seen this CEO trend before.
Divest Catalonia, which merges with Valencia, swallows Murcia. Then Aragona and Navarra are cheap buys, Galizia gets bankrupt and limps in, and a few years of LBOs later, Madrid is the last to accept a hostile takeover.
And do that again 20 to 50 years later, as soon as the lawyers' Yachts and palaces feel a bit small.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
It sounds like you're not too fond of the Catalonians. So why not just let them secede? (Though you don't have to let them take other parts.) You're not getting along well; staying together is like forcing two spouses who hate each other to stay married and live together: no good can come of it. Think of the benefits: you won't have a bunch of people constantly whining about independence from you, you won't have to support them financially, if you think they're a bunch of fuck-ups, well you can sit back and let them fuck up all by themselves, and you won't have to deal with it any more. What's the problem? And unlike decades ago, you're now all part of the EU, so you don't need to worry about issues regarding customs, trade, currency conversion, etc. So if Catalonia ends up insolvent, you can let the rest of the EU deal with them, instead of having to support them all by yourselves, and you can concentrate on more productive things like taking advantage of all that sun and wind and making yourselves energy-independent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:45PM
I'm not fond of the politicians. Because the others could do the legal thing, change the Constitution and split the country (it would mean a referendum and new elections, with referendum result needed to get stamped by the cameras before and after the elections). And yes, it would mean no more whiny Catalonians (or Basques) in central government, which happened any time one of the two big parties didn't manage to reach 50%, at least until recently (last handful elections have been messy, but nationalist lost a lot of traction because others took their place). Or maybe separatists will go full whiny when they see others are going to give them what they asked for and realize the troubles they would get into.
As for EU, they already said that anyone that splits goes out of EU and has to reapply. Scotland is not happy about that, because they would be out for years. Business located in Catalonia keep on saying they would move to other place, for example, just like ones in London are planning already. For Catalonia or Basque Country, or any other Spanish region that leaves, it would mean a weird situation with currency too.
Between this and Brexit (and by extension EU serving who knows who, but not the European citizens), I am feed up of politicians doing stupid things to look busy, never saying "I'm sorry, I fucked up, I will do other thing and this time it would be the correct one" and dragging everything with their ego and greed. Or the stupid / hypocrite declarations of "we don't know why populists are winning". But as someone said long ago, those that want the power are the ones that should not get it.