This chapter explores Brazil’s position amidst the competing dynamic between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the European Union’s Global Gateway in what concerns connectivity strategies. These initiatives seek to promote connectivity within and between regions through the development of physical and digital infrastructures while also securing their proponents strategic interests in the Global South. In this context, China and the European Union appear to offer competing propositions due to the underlying geoeconomic rationale that guide each connectivity strategy. The Belt and Road Initiative is based on non-concessional loans that underpin a shift of the geoeconomic centre of the international system eastward, while the Global Gateway links investments to the promotion and adoption of a set of values aligned to the current international liberal order. Due to structural deficiencies in its infrastructure network, Brazil could benefit from joining either the Chinese or the European initiative. Drawing upon geoeconomics literature from a strategic viewpoint, this chapter takes infrastructure development as a starting point to investigate Brazil’s options. It relies on documental and bibliographical research of Chinese and European connectivity strategies, as well as quantitative data from open databases.

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Brazil at a Crossroads: Hedging Between China’s and the European Union’s Connectivity Strategies

  • Carla Guapo Costa,
  • Fábio Colombo

摘要

This chapter explores Brazil’s position amidst the competing dynamic between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the European Union’s Global Gateway in what concerns connectivity strategies. These initiatives seek to promote connectivity within and between regions through the development of physical and digital infrastructures while also securing their proponents strategic interests in the Global South. In this context, China and the European Union appear to offer competing propositions due to the underlying geoeconomic rationale that guide each connectivity strategy. The Belt and Road Initiative is based on non-concessional loans that underpin a shift of the geoeconomic centre of the international system eastward, while the Global Gateway links investments to the promotion and adoption of a set of values aligned to the current international liberal order. Due to structural deficiencies in its infrastructure network, Brazil could benefit from joining either the Chinese or the European initiative. Drawing upon geoeconomics literature from a strategic viewpoint, this chapter takes infrastructure development as a starting point to investigate Brazil’s options. It relies on documental and bibliographical research of Chinese and European connectivity strategies, as well as quantitative data from open databases.