China and Brazil bolstered growing ties with trade and investment agreements on Thursday, as their summit with other emerging market powers, Russia and India, was scaled back due to a major earthquake in China.

Chinese President Hu Jintao decided to go home early to deal with the quake, which killed more than 600 people in western China, forcing the BRIC summit to be shortened into a one-day event that will end Thursday night.

Hu also canceled visits to Venezuela and Chile.

The increasingly influential BRIC countries, which account for about 40 percent of the world's population, are expected to use the summit in Brasilia to push demands that developing nations be given more say in global financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Hu and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed a five-year "action plan" aimed at boosting trade and energy cooperation. The two nations have grown closer amid a surge in commerce -- in 2009 China became Brazil's top trade partner.

Other projects agreed included a $5 billion steel plant at the Acu port in Rio de Janeiro state that would be China's biggest investment ever in Latin America's largest economy and its biggest foreign steel-plant investment.

China's Wuhan Iron and Steel and Brazilian logistics firm LLX Logistica, controlled by billionaire Eike Batista, will build the plant.

Lula also said China had expressed interest in bidding to construct a planned high-speed train line to connect Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil's two largest cities.

"The possibility for Chinese companies to participate in the modernization of Brazil's infrastructure is exceptional," Lula said, citing Brazil's preparations for the 2014 soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

China's Sinopec and the country's development bank signed a strategic development agreement with Brazil's state-run oil giant Petrobras, Sinopec Chairman Su Shulin told Reuters. Su said the deal will cover the development of Brazilian oil resources and trade with China.

Brazil's recent discovery of vast offshore oil reserves has opened a new area of potential cooperation with resource-hungry China, which last year agreed to lend $10 billion to Petrobras in return for guaranteed oil supply over the next decade.

Brazil and China also agreed to boost Brazilian beef and tobacco exports to the Asian country, and to move forward with cooperation on satellite launches.

"Dialogue with Iran"

Hu said after meeting Lula that both countries were willing to increase cooperation on international affairs and to push for reform of the global financial system.

A Brazilian government source said Lula asked Hu to maintain a dialogue with Iran over its nuclear weapons program ahead of the Brazilian leader's planned visit to Tehran next month. Lula has opposed fresh United Nations sanctions over Iran's nuclear program, saying that negotiations have not been exhausted.

"We are not isolated on Iran," said Marco Aurelio Garcia, Lula's foreign policy advisor.

Hu and Lula were scheduled to meet with Russia's Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday evening under a hastily revised schedule for the summit, which was originally scheduled to continue on Friday.

They are not expected to push for a new international reserve currency to rival the dollar, an idea they discussed last year. As the largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds, China is not keen to see the value of its investments diminish.

The BRIC leaders may have talks on bypassing the dollar by boosting inter-BRIC currency trade.


Reuters