China-Brazil deals fire up BRICS ascent
China’s prime minister has wound up his three-day visit to Brazil after signing 53 trade and investment deals.
The visit marked the Asian giant lifting the wraps on $53 billion of investment in with South America’s largest economy.
“China and Brazil are playing a leading role in the construction of a new global order,” President Dilma Rousseff said, with Prime Minister Li Keqiang on her side.
Bilateral trade between the BRICS group of developing states has fleshed out over the past decade, with China becoming Brazil’s main trading partner in 2009.
Trade between China and Latin America as a whole has exploded from barely $10 billion in 2000 to $255.5 billion in 2012.
Sino-Brazilian trade ballooned from $6.5 billion in 2003 to $83.3 billion in 2012.
China’s investment pledge blows a new lease of life into Brazil’s economy which is enduring a sluggish growth after a period of rapid expansion.
Li’s visit to South America came days after Beijing signed accords worth $25 billion and $22 billion respectively with fellow BRICS nations Russia and India.
The highlight of the agreements was an ambitious plan to link Brazil's eastern coast with the Peruvian Pacific coast via a transcontinental railway.
The railway link would reportedly cost around $30 billion and facilitate the movement of Brazilian exports to China.
Another important deal was finance and cooperation agreement worth $7 billion for Brazil's state-owned oil firm Petrobras.
Brazil’s Vale, the world’s biggest iron producer, also announced a range of deals including extended cooperation on maritime transport of iron ore.
Jose Graca Lima, head of Asian affairs in the Brazilian foreign ministry, described the tie-up a “second generation” of Chinese investment switching from trade in raw materials to heavy industry and infrastructure.
Rousseff, who will make a state visit next year to China, spoke of a “new intensity in our relations”.
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