China’s Ambitious Train Plan Crawls Through Chile’s Bureaucracy
- Belt and Road plan meets difficulty in prosperous nations
- President’s endorsement can’t make the project move faster
This article is for subscribers only.
Chilean president Sebastian Pinera picked up a photograph from his desk in Santiago’s La Moneda Palace.
“Do you know who this is?” he asked reporters. There in the picture was Chinese President Xi Jinping, talking and gesturing as a grinning Pinera held a wine glass. But presidential chumminess hasn’t helped bring China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative to its last Latin American frontier. Despite Pinera’s endorsement, a public-private partnership to build the first high-speed rail line in the region is stalled in a regulatory web.