China’s Li Keqiang Seeks Big Deals in Brazil

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrives in Brazil on Monday for his first official trip to Latin America bearing tens of billions of dollars worth of trade and investment deals in the latest sign of China’s rising influence in the continent.

During his three-day visit, Mr Li is expected to witness the signing of at least $50bn in Chinese investments in Brazil’s infrastructure, a senior Brazilian official said last week.

Mr Li will then continue his eight-day South American tour with visits to Colombia, Peru and Chile.

The four countries account for 57 per cent of China’s booming trade with Latin America and Beijing is increasingly interested in boosting its direct investment in the region, particularly in the roads, bridges and railways it has already built across its own country.

China’s rising influence in a region once considered America’s “backyard” is seen by some as a challenge to the two-century-old “Monroe Doctrine”, which Washington established to discourage foreign (particularly European) influence in the region.

Some policy makers in Beijing hav

e argued that China should ramp up its involvement in Latin America as a counterbalance to the continued enormous US diplomatic, military and economy presence in Asia.

In January Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $250bn of investment in Latin America over the next decade, highlighting China’s strong economic interest in the region.

Bilateral trade between China and Brazil increased 13-fold in value terms between 2001 and 2013, according to Brazilian statistics, and China has been Brazil’s biggest trading partner since 2009.

But a pronounced slowdown in China, led by sliding construction and weakening demand for commodities, meant annual trade between China and Latin America as a whole increased by just 0.8 per cent in 2014 from a year earlier.

As a result of the slowdown at home, China’s enormous state-owned construction and infrastructure companies are looking overseas for opportunities to build the roads, ports, railways and airports that are overly ubiquitous in China. (www.chinainout.com)