International trade has always been highly dependent on shipping, and even now that the pandemic is over, the wave of globalization has begun to recede. However, its importance in trade cannot be denied.
It can be said that whoever controls the route of shipping has the future. And there is such a small country, relying on "toll collection" mixed up, even the world's largest country in the United States is in its hands, it is located in the middle of the Americas - Panama.
As a small country in Central America, Panama's economic development is indeed very good. According to relevant data, its total GDP in 2020 is about 53 billion US dollars, and the per capita GDP exceeds 12,000 US dollars, ranking 60th in the world.
Behind such an economic achievement, there is an inseparable relationship with the Panama Canal.
As one of the world's three major canals, the Panama Canal still has an orange share of more than five percent of the world's shipping. According to the statistics of the Canal Management Committee.
As of 2018, the Panama Canal has accumulated more than 1.1 million vessels. In recent years, the average number of ships passing through shipping each year is about 11,000.
Based on the average price of shipping pass-through fees, canal tolls alone generate more than $2 billion a year in direct revenue for the country of Panama.
But this is only a small part of the benefits that the canal has brought to the small country of Panama, and the hidden benefits have made the canal bring greater benefits to Panama.
In addition to the visible direct income generated by the average annual navigation of more than 11,000 ships, it also brought more development opportunities for Panama, and finally made this small Central American country have a relatively affluent life.
Overall, Panama, which is relatively backward in agriculture and industry, mainly relies on the following industries to achieve the road to prosperity.
01 Commercial trade
Based on the trade nature of the canal itself, Panama is not worried about the import of goods. Thus, in agriculture, unlike other countries, it adopts a cash crop-centred development model.
By exporting cash crops in exchange for foreign exchange, we are buying necessities such as food.
In addition to this, because cargo ships passing through the canal require a lot of time to dock through the locks. Based on this, Panama also resupplys ships that pass through the canal, which has become the most important driving force for its economic development.
Around the commercial field, Panama has built the Cologne Free Trade Zone, which is also the largest free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere. Relying on this, trade became the foundation of Panama's state.
02Financial industry
Panama earned a lot of foreign exchange after relying on commercial trade for profits. Based on this, it also laid a good foundation for its second step of development, because the country's land area is small and there are few people.
Therefore, the foreign exchange earned by trade and canal tolls cannot be spent, and this money can not be devalued, and for various reasons mentioned above, the development of the financial industry has become the choice of Panama.
At present, Panama has become the new financial center in the central region of Latin America, and the total banking and insurance industry has exceeded 60 billion US dollars.
At the same time, as a well-known offshore registration place in the world, many companies and merchant ships have chosen to register in Panama, which has also played a positive role in the development of their related industries.
03 Tourism
In addition to the above-mentioned business and financial industries, Panama is also actively developing tourism. On the one hand, this is to carry out industrial upgrading and transformation, on the other hand, it is to realize the traffic dividends brought by the financial industry and commercial trade.
Although this strategy has been impacted to a certain extent in the era of the epidemic, it still has a certain forward-looking perspective from the perspective of the overall strategic layout.
Overall, Panama has carried out economic construction around the canal and formed a three-in-one development layout. The most important of these is the canal itself, but this is now the "river of prosperity" of the Panamanian people.
In history, the colonizers were full of pain and humiliation.
The earliest history of the Panama Canal dates back to the Age of Discovery. The Age of Discovery was an age of wealth and bloodshed, with Europeans trading by opening up shipping routes.
One of the most notorious was the Black Triangle trade, a period in which slave traders from Europe brought wine, salt, cloth and other goods in exchange for slaves in Africa.
Ships then crossed the Atlantic route to the Americas and exchanged tobacco, tea, and other industrial goods and shipped them back to Europe.
Behind such a trading system is inseparable from the support of various conditions, the Americas due to the colonial genocidal policy, the Indians do not exist, in urgent need of external labor.
In the process, the Europeans completed the primitive accumulation of capitalism, and in the end, only Africans were injured in such a trade route, losing more than a hundred million strong laborers, but making wedding dresses for American colonists and Europeans.
This is undoubtedly a very tragic thing.
It is worth noting, however, that the Black Triangle trade was extremely dependent on monsoons and warm currents, and that the slave trade could only reach the east coast of the Americas due to the long coastline of the Americas.
In order to bring the slave trade directly to the whole of America, in 1524, the king of the Spanish Empire proposed to build a canal.
At this time, the Panama region in the central Part of the Americas became the most ideal place to dig a canal, and the plan for the canal was immediately launched.
However, the road should be walked step by step, and the meal should be stuttered. Building a Grand Canal that stretched across Panama in one fell swoop was still difficult for Spain, the world's first empire at the time.
After all, building large-scale water conservancy projects is a huge challenge for any country, and there is no shortage of dynasties in ancient China that collapsed.
But with the fall of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Glorious Revolution of England in 1688. Spain almost lost its maritime hegemony, and Britain replaced it as the new world hegemon.
Although Spain continued to control the Colonies of Latin America, its influence was much less than before.
At this time, the Spaniards thought of a way to take advantage of it, although we do not have the money to build the canal now, but the exploration work can still be done. So they built a cobblestone post along the planned path of the canal in hopes of slowing it out.
In 1800, at a critical juncture when Spain was determined to build the Panama Canal, a series of wars of independence broke out in Latin America.
Haiti, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras and other Central and South American countries have all fought wars of independence. In the midst of the rolling tide of national independence, Panama also participated and replaced the protectorate.
At this point, Spain's centuries-long dream of canals has officially been shattered.
In 1879, the French inherited the mantle of Spain and became the de facto controllers of the colonization of the region. In the process, he set up a company and began experimenting with canal excavation.
Apparently, Europeans have been trying to build canals to shorten the voyage.
Before the completion of the Panama Canal, fleets from Europe needed to sail along the coastline of the Americas if they wanted to reach the west coast of the Americas, with a range of more than 10,000 kilometers.
This is a long journey for today's gas turbine ships, not to mention the Europeans who were in the era of sail ships at that time.
But apparently for Europe at the time, Panama, located in the middle of the Americas, was clearly in its traditional sphere of influence. But even then, the excavation of the canal was particularly difficult and eventually failed.
Overall, the difficulties of the excavation of the Panama Canal are mainly reflected in the following aspects:
First, poor construction conditions
If you want to dig the Panama Canal, you must first face the harsh climate of Central America, which has become the first "roadblock" for the construction of the canal.
As a perennial temperature above 20 degrees Celsius, coupled with the rainy season and the dry season distinguish obviously. Engineering and technical difficulties often arise during the construction of canals. Coupled with the high temperature, a large number of workers gathered together, resulting in an epidemic.
According to incomplete statistics, during France's participation in the construction of the Panama Canal alone, more than 20,000 workers died as a result of these reasons.
Second, the huge total amount of works
The Panama Canal looks like just a point on the world map, but it is about 65 kilometers long and about 300 meters wide.
The canal has excavated more than 250 million cubic meters of earth, compared with the 70 million cubic meters of the Suez Canal.
Such a huge amount of engineering has become the second difficulty that construction personnel need to face.
At the same time, due to the relatively backward technical level at that time, the canal excavation period was longer, and the construction difficulty faced was relatively high. At the same time, Spain's attempts to dig the canal were unsuccessful, which could not help but cast a thick shadow over the construction of the Panama Canal.
However, the demand for shipping trade did not disappear, so after Spain, a new canal builder appeared, it was France.
At that time, the French bought the right to dig the canal from Panama at a high price, hoping to grab profits. But in the end, under the obstruction of the Americans, it withdrew and eventually ended in failure.
In 1903, the United States again proposed plans to build the Panama Canal. However, at that time, the United States was practicing isolationism, and the public was reluctant to participate in the construction of the canal.
But in one war, an American warship sailed from the East Coast and arrived only after the war.
Coupled with the sluggish domestic economic situation in the United States at that time, it needed to be boosted by infrastructure, and for the above reasons, under the leadership of Roosevelt, the Panama Canal program was successfully passed.
Construction of the canal began two years later, and the scale of the project was so large that more than 50,000 workers were dispatched.
It is worth noting that some of the workers are Chinese workers from China, who have just completed the construction of the Western Railroad in the United States and turned to the construction of the Panama Canal.
These industrious Chinese have built countless foundation projects for the United States. But in the end, it was ushered in by a "Chinese exclusion bill" that eventually became the "inferior" of the United States.
Even after the law was abolished, racial discrimination against Chinese people still occurred from time to time, which is undoubtedly a sad thing.
The colonialist thinking, which is different from that of Spain and France, is more "tactful" than that of the United States. They purchased the right to excavate and operate the canal from the Panamanians, and set up a canal company for operation and maintenance, and obtained a lot of benefits.
But apparently, the Panamanians were very vocal about this, and the two sides began a round of fighting over the ownership of the canal.
At the time, the main ships through which the Panama Canal passed were All American. But one of the very rogue things is that they were forced to sell the right to dig and operate the canal.
Panama had no right to impose tariffs and tolls on ships passing through the canal, and government finances nearly collapsed.
Finally, under Roosevelt's leadership, the two sides signed the new William Taft Agreement, and Panama had the right to tax some American goods in the Canal Zone. And this is obviously nothing more than a "handout" by the United States. The majority of the canal's interests are still firmly in the hands of the United States, which has also triggered the "canal dispute" between Panama and the United States.
Panama has always wanted to reclaim the canal, but the United States has not bought it. The "Canal Zone" was established around the Panama Canal, the United States Southern Command was established, and more than 14 military bases were established.
In 1964, a young Panamanian man raised the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone and was shot and killed by U.S. military police.
This incident intensified the canal dispute between the United States and Panama, and in the years since, Panama has repeatedly proposed at the United Nations to reclaim sovereignty over the canal zone, but in the end it has not been successful.
The two sides have been fighting over ownership of the canal, with hundreds of thousands of panamanians entering the canal zone to protest the U.S. occupation. The United States has directly sent troops to launch a coup in Panama to overthrow the anti-Us government.
As a result of the fight, the Americans ceded part of the rights to the canal and Panama formed a canal committee. And in the process committed to withdrawal and "demilitarization".
But even so, the Panama Canal itself is also part of Panamanian territory, and the United States and Panama jointly manage the canal and establish the so-called "Canal Management Committee", which is undoubtedly an infringement on Panama's national sovereignty.
In 1999, the transitional agreement between the United States and Panama lapsed, and Panama officially regained ownership of the canal, so that the century-long canal dispute was completely over.
Although Panama eventually regained its country's legitimate interests, it had to face the "neutralization" of the canal, but even this result was a victory for the small Central American country in some sense.
Today, Panama has successfully regained ownership of the canal and relied on the world's rare "toll booth" to develop the country's economy.
Obviously, from the geographical location point of view, the greatest impact of the canal is the commercial trade in the United States, from which such a small country relies on the canal to choke the throat of the United States, so that the world's largest country is jealous of it.