El Salvador to Build New Stadium in Collaboration With China, Bukele Says

El Salvador will build a new national stadium in a collaboration with China, President Nayib Bukele said in a Spanish-language Twitter post on Friday.

“This is a collaboration granted directly by President Xi and a sample of the friendship between the peoples of China and El Salvador,” Bukele tweeted in Spanish, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The new stadium will have a seating capacity of 50,000, Bukele said in the tweet. It will be built in the current location of the country’s military school in Santa Tecla, which will be rebuilt elsewhere and have twice the capacity it has now. Bukele telegraphed the announcement in an earlier tweet.
In September, El Salvador became the first – and so far only – country to designate bitcoin legal tender. “We must break the paradigms of the past,” Bukele said at the time. “El Salvador has the right to move toward the First World.”

The decision has been criticized. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in November said bitcoin shouldn’t be used as legal tender in El Salvador and urged the Central American country to strengthen the regulation and supervision of its newly established payment system.


By Greg Ahlstrand