PRESS RELEASE
Chile Wants China To Build Large Bioceanic Projects; ‘Without China There Is No Integration with the World’
Oct. 9, 2017 (EIRNS)—Speaking to China Hoy, Chile’s Undersecretary of Public Works, Sergio Galilea, emphasized that "without China, there is no integration with the world," adding that Chile can serve as a "a good bridge nation" [to China] primarily for South America.
Galilea added that the vision that Chile and China share can help create a "community of interests," particularly in the field of infrastructure. Chile wants, and needs, China’s expertise in building large-scale infrastructure projects, he said, pointing to the binational, two-way Agua Negra tunnel under the Andes, which will create a bioceanic corridor connecting Chile’s Pacific port of Coquimbo (in central Chile) with Brazil’s Atlantic port of Porto Alegre. "It’s not just anyone who can build tunnels at 4,500 meters of altitude," Gallilea states, referencing the expertise of Chinese construction firms.
The Minister noted that these large projects
"also require in their construction phase types of technologies and a productive organization in which Chinese plays a vanguard role in the world."
The construction of Agua Negra, he adds, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of other infrastructure projects in which Chinese companies can participate. There is, for example, the Las Leñas tunnel, another binational project in the central O’Higgins region of Chile, which is not at such a high altitude. During the recent early-September "Chile Week in China," Chilean and Chinese officials discussed many other infrastructure projects including possibly building a railroad at the San Francisco border crossing, in northern Chile’s Atacama region, passing into the Argentine province of Catamarca.
