NOT since the civil war of the 1980s have so many helicopters been clattering over remote parts of Nicaragua. But now the guys squinting down through the tree canopy are in suits: lawyers and business consultants from the United States, Australian engineers, British environmental auditors, even Chinese executives. Their per diems are being paid by Wang Jing, a Chinese businessman whose $40 billion quest is to build a canal from Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast to its Pacific one.

The dream of such a canal, three times as long as the one that cuts through Panama, is centuries old, and has made fools of all who ever believed in it. But Mr Wang has already pulled off one remarkable feat: he has persuaded the former revolutionaries in the Sandinista government to put Nicaragua’s sovereignty in hock to make the dream come true.