The fight over whether Brazil will join China in its global Belt and Road infrastructure initiative when Chinese President Xi Jinping pays a state visit to Brazil Nov. 20, is coming down to the wire. O Globo, a Brazilian Establishment daily with long-standing ties to the British monarchy, reported Oct. 28 that President Lula da Silva’s Special Foreign Policy Advisor Celso Amorim had “signaled” in an interview that Brazil will not sign onto the BRI.
Amorim told O Globo that Brazil intends to raise its relations with China to a new level, but insisted that “the key word is synergy. It’s not signing up, like an insurance policy. We’re not entering into an accession treaty. It’s a negotiation of synergies.” He added that the Chinese “talk about the Belt, but it’s not a question of joining. They give their side any name they want, but what matters is that these are projects that Brazil has defined and that will be accepted or not.”
“With this,” O Globo wrote, “Amorim signaled that Brazil should not formally join the Chinese program. Created over a decade ago, around 150 developing countries had to sign a memorandum of understanding to join the initiative.”
Brazil’s O Cafezinho editor, Miguel de Rosário, reported later the same day that he had spoken with Amorim to clarify if O Globo’s interpretation of his statement was correct. “Amorim replied that this is not the case,” de Rosário wrote. He quoted Amorim: “We’re going to work on synergies between China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ project and Brazilian projects.”
