As China's outbound investments into Latin America grow, Brazil is welcoming more Chinese private companies as active players in more diversified ways of bilateral economic cooperation.

A more mature and strategic wave of Chinese outbound investments is sweeping Latin America, especially Brazil, financial and legal experts agreed at a China-Brazil investment forum in Beijing Tuesday.

"We see a new trend towards more Chinese financing of private infrastructure projects in Latin America," said Michael McGuinness, a partner in the New York office and head of Latin America M&A of Shearman & Sterling, a global leading law firm and one of the co-hosts of the forum.

Although Chinese State-owned enterprises still dominate China participation in M&As in the region, private investments are becoming more active, and PE and joint investment projects are growing.

In a time of a global economic slowdown and sluggish international demand, China has been looking for more trade and investment opportunities in the emerging world, especially Latin America.

In 2012, Chinese outbound investment reached $77.2 billion and about 17 percent went to Latin America. And Brazil is by far the largest recipient of China's outbound investments and takes 90 percent of all Chinese M&A deals in the region.

Among all, Chinese companies invested over $15 billion in Brazil in 2012, expanding from traditional natural resources sectors into automobile and other manufacturing businesses, agribusiness as well as infrastructure, said Robert Ellison, managing partner in the Sao Paulo office of Shearman & Sterling.

China became Brazil's largest trading partner in 2009 and remains so till now. The largest economy in Latin America saw $75 billion in bilateral trade with China in 2012, in 2009 the figure was $37 billion and in 2003 only $6.7 billion, statistics from the Brazilian central bank show.

Looking into the future, diversity of players and invested areas will provide more momentum for the economic cooperation opportunities between the two nations.

Infrastructure will be the top focus area for Chinese companies seeking cooperation with Brazil in the future, Li Jinzhang, Chinese ambassador to Brazil, said on Sunday over the 20th anniversary of China-Brazil Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

"To solve the bottleneck problems in domestic economic development, China has invested a huge amount of money in infrastructure construction in recent years and gained rich experiences, so China is willing to participate more actively in the process of integrated infrastructure construction in Latin America," he said.