China and Brazil unveiled on Tuesday a multibillion-U.S. dollar series of trade and investment deals, as Beijing looks to invest up to US$53 billion in South America’s largest economy.

The deals were announced at the start of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s first official visit to Latin America. Mr Li began an official three-day visit to Brazil on Monday, as part of his tour among four Latin American nations that runs until May 26.

Headlining 35 deals on Mr Li’s visit to Brazil were a pair of finance and co-operation agreements worth in total US$7 billion for Brazil’s state-owned oil firm Petrobras.

The two countries also signed a range of deals designed to strengthen bilateral co-operation on trade, investment, agriculture, energy and transport.

A US$1.3 billion agreement to sell 22 Brazilian Embraer commercial jets to China’s Tianjin Airlines was also finalised this week, Embraer said, according to Agence France-Press news agency.

China also vowed to lift an import ban on Brazilian beef and signed onto an ambitious project to build a railway more than 3,500 kilometres (2,200 miles) long, from the key southeastern Brazilian port of Santos on the Atlantic coast, to Peru’s Pacific port of Ilo.

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, who will make a state visit next year to China, spoke of a new intensity in bilateral relations. “China and Brazil are playing a leading role in the construction of a new global order,” she said.

Mr Li pointed to China’s “rich experience” in building infrastructure, saying his country “would like to co-operate with Brazil in reducing its costs”.