A Chinese company is inching closer to building a 170-mile canal across Nicaragua, from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea -- a massive project that raises all kinds of practical, environmental and geopolitical questions, McClatchy Newspapers reported.

Bill Wild, the chief project adviser to HKND Group, the Hong Kong-based company that has won a 50-year concession to build and operate the canal, said that the size of the endeavour is unique in human history. "There's been no civil engineering project of this magnitude -- ever," he noted.

In order for the project to become a reality, an estimated 50,000 workers would have to cut a 90-foot-deep ditch across the Central American country and move some 5 billion cubic meters of dirt, rock and sludge along the way, McClatchy Newspapers detailed.

So far, work is only in the preliminary stages, though hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent: The land where the canal is to be built has to be surveyed and routes need to be identified; and HKND Group must also embark on negotiations with current landholders, while tens of thousands of Nicaraguan citizens would eventually have to move to allow for construction to begin.

The whole project is "cloaked in secrecy," the newspaper group claimed, in part because the proposed canal's environmental impact has yet to be assessed. Meanwhile, speculations abound about who exactly is backing the massive undertaking, the Diplomat noted: "Is this a grand strategy of China's government, or is the government merely playing a partial role in a private-sector initiative?" the publication wondered.

Officially, the project is led by Wang Jing, a Chinese billionaire and head of HKND Group. But Beijing has long been active in Central America and has embarked on a number of initiatives "to build military and economic relations" with Latin American nations, the Diplomat detailed. Those moves marked a clear "challenge to traditional U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere," the publication commented.

The idea of building a waterway through Nicaragua, however, is not as novel as one might think, McClatchy Newspapers recalled: The United States considered constructing a canal through the country as early as in the late 19th century, though the eruption of the Momotombo volcano persuaded American lawmakers to opt for Panama, instead.