Bukele says in a'surprise' New Year's Eve tweet that El Salvador will build a new national stadium in collaboration with China.
El Salvador will collaborate with China to build a new national stadium, according to President Nayib Bukele in a Spanish-language Twitter post on Friday.
- "This is a collaboration provided directly by President Xi and a sample of the relationship between the peoples of China and El Salvador," Bukele tweeted in Spanish, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
- The new stadium would have a real capacity of 50,000 seated fans, Bukele said in the tweet. It will be constructed in the current location of the country's military school, which will be rebuilt elsewhere to double its current capacity. Bukele had hinted to the news in a previous tweet.
- El Salvador became the first – and so far only – country to recognise bitcoin as legal tender in September. Bukele said at the time, "We must break the paradigms of the past." "El Salvador has earned the right to advance into the First World."
- The decision has its detractors. In November, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated that bitcoin should not be used as legal tender in El Salvador, and urged the Central American country to tighten regulation and oversight of its newly established payment ecosystem.
