At Davos, the Real Star May Have Been China, Not Trump
At one end of town, President Michel Temer of Brazil welcomed an unexpected offer from Beijing for Latin American nations to work closely with a Chinese initiative, known as the Belt
and Road, intended to spread its economic and diplomatic influence abroad.
One of the best-attended speeches at the forum was
that of Liu He, a member of China’s ruling Politburo, who promoted the Belt and Road initiative, also known as One Belt, One Road.
On Friday, the Chinese government used a policy document issued in Beijing to call for a “Polar Silk Road”
that would link China to Europe and the Atlantic via a shipping route past the melting Arctic ice cap.
At a summit meeting for Latin American and Caribbean foreign ministers in Santiago, Chile, Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China called for close cooperation
and participation by the region’s countries, although he stopped short of formally including them in the initiative.
The plan gradually extended to include the Mideast, Europe
and eastern Africa, with Beijing promising hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in highways, rail lines, ports, power stations and other infrastructure, much of it through loans from Chinese state-owned banks.
In Davos, President Temer of Brazil said that he was not concerned about the rising influence in South America of China, which has increased investments in his country
and extended enormous loans to Venezuela and Ecuador.