A Chinese Kick For Brazilian Sport

China knows how to build for and stage major international sporting events. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 was a success on both scores in anyone’s book. 2016 Olympics host, Rio de Janeiro, is to benefit from that expertise, as is football’s 2014 FIFA World Cup, also to be held in Brazil. Among the welter of bilateral agreements signed during Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff’s state visit to China this week is a cooperation and investment agreement for Chinese assistance at the two events.

Though details are scanty, FIFA will be relieved; it has been fretting that Brazil is running behind in developing the stadiums and other infrastructure for its tournament. A little Chinese civil engineering expertise should get the projects back on track. And for China, the goodwill that should generate with FIFA and a little up-close look at World Cup preparations shouldn’t go amiss as its own football association nurtures dreams of bidding for the World Cup in 2026.

 

BRICSHouse Five

The BRICS summit being held in Sanya on Hainan Island on Thursday will probably be presented as a united front of the leading emerging economies. The clarion call will be for strengthened cooperation and coordination between the quintet (South Africa makes five) over global issues such as trade, financial regulation and microeconomic policy, and the environment and climate change.

Yet there are plenty of underlying tensions between the members. China’s relations with Brazil are a case in point. Brazil’s new president, Dilma Rousseff, is making a concomitant state visit. Behind the headline trade deals (China is Brazil’s leading trade partner, with a small surplus in Brazil’s favor), she will be expressing concerns heard increasingly at home that Chinese manufacturing exports to Brazil are de-industrializing the Brazilian economy, while Brazilian exports to China are over concentrated in commodities. (State media are making a big counterpoint of the fact that China is buying Brazilian aircraft as part of the trade deals.)

Certainly the strength of the real, exacerbated by Brazil’s commodity exports to China, makes Chinese exports even cheaper in competition with domestic products. Rousseff will have been pressing Beijing to press ahead more vigorously with letting the yuan appreciate. People who live in bricshouses can still throw stones.