Ambassador applauds growing Beijing-Brasilia relationship

China's passion for the World Cup and this year's host country has astounded Brazil's top envoy to China, who believes that the growing bond between the countries will be further strengthened by President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to the South American nation.

"You will be amazed by the number of agreements that will be signed between governmental agencies and companies during the visit," Brazilian Ambassador to China Valdemar Carneiro Leao said. "It is a long list."

The ambassador said China will announce investment deals in various fields, including capital products and manufacturing, during the Brazil visit, while Brazil expects to sell 60 aircraft to China.

Leao highlighted the potential in infrastructure cooperation, especially railways - a key sector for Brazil's "major program of infrastructure modernization" and the transportation of agricultural goods.

"As agriculture has developed rapidly, production has moved more and more to the west. The distance between the production areas and ports on the Atlantic coast has become longer and longer," he said.

"We should be constructing about 11,000 km of railway in the next four or five years," said the ambassador, adding that the experience of China, which has the world's longest railway network, would be extremely helpful. "We are encouraging Chinese companies to come and take part in the bidding process," Leao said.

China has been Brazil's largest trading partner since 2009, with two-way trade reaching $90.3 billion in 2013, up 5.3 percent over the previous year.

However, the booming economic ties between the world's second-largest and Latin America's largest economies has not assuaged concerns about the economic slowdown in the five major emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, collectively known as BRICS. The Brazilian diplomat did not deny the concerns, but he underscored the bloc's contribution to the world economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.

"If the major emphasis during the five years since the crisis was the reform of international economic governance, there is a shift now to a more internal agenda of the BRICS, without prejudice, to the continuation of cooperation on issues of global governance and related matters," he said.

zhaoshengnan@chinadaily.com.cn