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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has lifted the wraps on a multi-billion-dollar series of trade and investment deals with Brazil, as Beijing looks to invest $53 billion in South America's largest economy.
The news unveiled yesterday at the start of Li's first official visit to Latin America is a huge boon for Brazil as it endures a fifth straight year of low growth after a period of rapid expansion fuelled by Asian demand for commodities that has since slowed.
Li's host, President Dilma Rousseff, hopes Brazil can direct Chinese cash to overhaul decaying infrastructure as the country's tourist magnet Rio de Janeiro prepares to host South America's first ever Olympics next year.
Headlining 35 deals on Li's first official visit to Latin America were a pair of finance and cooperation agreements worth $7 billion for Brazil's state-owned oil firm Petrobras.
Rousseff, who will make a state visit next year to China, spoke of a "new intensity in our relations."
"China and Brazil are playing a leading role in the construction of a new global order," she added.
Rousseff, re-elected in October, has been battling a welter of negative economic data as well as fallout from a huge graft scandal at Petrobras.
Li pointed to China's "rich experience" in building infrastructure, saying Beijing "would like to cooperate with Brazil in reducing its costs."
Despite a multi-billion-dollar kickbacks scandal battering its reputation as Brazil's flagship company, Petrobras had earlier this year received another Beijing boost in signing a $3.5 billion financing deal with the China Investment Bank.
Despite becoming Brazil's number one trading partner in 2009, amid an exponential rise in two-way trade, China currently ranks only 12th in terms of actual investment in Brazil, prompting Brasilia to seek deeper economic ties.
The Chinese are notably supplying new metro trains and catamarans to Rio and Li will visit the Olympic host city today to inspect those investments before leaving on Thursday for Colombia ahead of trips to Peru and Chile.
Li's tour, aimed at underpinning growing Chinese influence in Latin America, comes just days after Beijing signed accords worth $25 billion and $22 billion respectively with fellow BRICS developing nations Russia. But the Brazil package is worth more than those combined.
