Beijing: In a major setback to China’s BRI, Brazil has decided against joining Beijing’s multi-billion-dollar initiative becoming the second country after India in the BRICS bloc not to endorse the mega project.
Brazil, headed by President Lula da Silva, will not join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and instead seek alternative ways to collaborate with Chinese investors, Celso Amorim, special presidential adviser for international affairs, said.
Brazil wants to “take the relationship with China to a new level, without having to sign an accession contract”, he told Brazilian newspaper O Globo.
“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”.
According to Amorim, the aim is to use some of the Belt and Road framework to find “synergy” between Brazilian infrastructure projects and the investment funds associated with the initiative, without necessarily formally joining the group, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted him as saying.
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.
The decision contradicts China’s plans to make Brazil’s joining of the initiative a centrepiece of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Brasilia on November 20, the Post reported. Officials from Brazil’s economy and foreign affairs ministries recently voiced opposition to the idea, it said.
India was the first country to voice reservations and stood steadfast in its opposition to BRI, a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping to further the global influence of China with investments to build infrastructure projects.
India has protested against China for building the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), stated to be the flagship project of the BRI through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) in violation of its sovereignty.
India and China complete disengagement process in Eastern LadakhSrinagar: The disengagement process between India and China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh was completed after which the two armies started verification of positions and dismantling of infrastructure by each other, according to reports, citing sources. The sources added that the dismantling of temporary structures in Depsang plains and Demchok is almost complete and a certain amount of verification has already taken place on both sides. The verification process is being done physically as well as using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Troops on both sides have been withdrawn to be stationed at depth in the rear locations as part of the disengagement process. The patrolling, which will be undertaken to points hitherto inaccessible since April 2020, will be done by small parties of troops numbering around 10 to 15 soldiers. India and China have been locked in a military standoff along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh following Chinese incursions over four and half years ago. Last week, four days after India announced that an agreement on patrolling in the Depsang Plains and Demchok had been reached with China, Beijing affirmed the same, saying that “the Chinese and Indian frontier troops are engaged in relevant work, which is going smoothly at the moment”. In Depsang plains, Indian troops will now be able to patrol beyond the ‘bottleneck’ area as the Chinese had been preventing Indian troops from accessing the patrolling points that lay beyond. In Demchok, Indian troops should now be able to get to the patrolling points at Track Junction and Charding Nullah. However, the large number of Indian troops rushed to Ladakh after the stand-off in 2020 will continue to remain in place till a wider consensus on the border patrolling mechanism is reached with the Chinese. |
