Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Brazil has backed away from joining China’s transcontinental infrastructure project Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), becoming the second BRICS bloc nation after India to refrain from joining the over USD 200 billion plan, which is already floundering in many countries, including Pakistan.
China hoped to make the flagship BRI’s expansion a centerpiece of President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to Brazil in November 2024, the media reported on Tuesday.
Reports said Brazil has decided against joining China’s BRI and was instead seeking alternative ways to collaborate with Chinese investors.
Celso Amorim, a special presidential adviser for international affairs, told the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that Brazil wants to “take the relationship with China to a new level, without having to sign an accession contract.”
“We are not entering into a treaty,” Amorim said, explaining that Brazil does not want to take Chinese infrastructure and trade projects as “an insurance policy.”
Brazil is aiming to use some of the BRI framework to find “synergy” between Brazilian infrastructure projects and the investment funds associated with the Chinese initiative, without necessarily formally joining the group.
The Chinese “call it the Belt (and Road) … and they can give whatever names they want, but what matters is that there are projects that Brazil has defined as a priority and that may or may not be accepted (by Beijing)”, Amorim said.
President Xi Jinping is set to visit Brasilia on November 20, but officials from Brazil’s economy and foreign affairs ministries recently voiced opposition to the BRI idea.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was advised by diplomats to delay any announcement about joining the BRI until after the ongoing US presidential election, scheduled for next week (November 5).
Experts told him that Brazil joining China’s flagship infrastructure project would not only fail to bring any tangible benefits for Brazil in the short term but could also make relations with a potential Donald Trump administration in the US more difficult.
Last week, Amorim and the President’s chief of staff Rui Costa traveled to Beijing to discuss the BRI and returned “unconvinced and unimpressed” by China’s offers.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai – speaking at an event in São Paulo – urged Brazil to view the proposal through an “objective lens” and “risk management.”
The Chinese embassy in Brasilia called her remarks “irresponsible” and “disrespectful.”
China’s state-run Global Times responded with an editorial connecting Tai’s comments to the Monroe Doctrine, the US policy that historically opposed European colonialism in the Americas while asserting American influence in the region.
“Tai’s warning to Brazil reveals a power ideology that regards Brazil as a ‘geopolitical backyard’ of the US, showing a fundamental lack of respect for both the Brazilian government and its people,” the editorial said.