A $1bn Chinese investment to build an electric vehicle plant, championed by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was meant to breathe new hope into Camaçari, an industrial city rocked by US automaker Ford’s departure four years ago.
But on a development that carmaker BYD sold to locals as a “Brazilian Silicon Valley” with the promise of 20,000 jobs, diggers and mobile cranes lay idle underneath the blazing sun one recent afternoon.
Following inspections of the site and construction workers’ accommodation in December, officials “rescued” 163 Chinese nationals — all now returned home — from allegedly “degrading” conditions that authorities likened to slavery.
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