Mourao will chair a plenary session of the Chinese-Brazilian High-Level Cooperation Commission (COSBAN), and will also convey a message from the Brazilian president to the Chinese president. The visit will wrap up on May 24.
"Chinese investment in Brazil, based on our assumptions and monitoring, has already reached $60 billion, which is, undoubtedly, a great centre for attracting Chinese investment into Latin America", said Tulio Cariello said, stressing that he thinks that this interest will be maintained, despite a significant decrease recorded last year.
In a recent interview with the Brazilian outlet OUL, Chinese Ambassador to Brazil Yang Wanming said that Brazil "has all the conditions in place to become an important participant in expanding the New Silk Road on the continent, because China-Brazil cooperation has a strong foundation and great potential".
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According to the professor, despite the fact that the New Silk Road initiative has been primarily focused on Eurasia and Africa, it extends to other regions, even if unofficially.
"We are witnessing that Chinese investments in Latin America are generally in line with the New Silk Road project. So I think that, after all, the official entry of, let's say, Latin American countries into this project stops being something from the field of rhetoric, because in practice this happens in one form or another. Chinese investments aimed at the development of the New Silk Road are already present all over the world, regardless of whether they are part of the original project", Cariello explained.
Tulio Cariello also believes that the interest of Chinese investors due to their pragmatism will generally correlate with the possibilities of the Brazilian market. The expert, however, noted that Chinese investors look to Brazil as an attractive country for their investments and the interest in Brazil is "genuine".
The views and opinions expressed by Tulio Cariello are those of the expert and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.