Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva arrives in China for a crucial state visit that pneumonia forced him to take place at the last minute last month. The trip, which includes a stop in Shanghai on the 13th and a meeting with his counterpart Xi Jinping on the 14th in Beijing, is of vital importance for the Latin American power both from a political and economic point of view: it is its first trading partner since 2009. Lula, who is traveling with a huge delegation of businessmen, governors, congressmen and ministers, intends to close some twenty agreements, quite a contrast to his trip to Washington, which concluded in less than 24 hours and did not include major announcements. In the Asian giant, expectations are high. The state media have been anticipating the visit of “an old friend of the Chinese people” for days, which, they hope, will serve to “provide certainty in the midst of growing uncertainties in the international arena.” The Brazilian has already visited China in each of his two previous terms.
Lula intends to reiterate to Xi his defense of a multipolar world cup, with a greater role for the large emerging countries, such as Brazil itself, India, Turkey or Indonesia, and for multilateral organizations. In the hundred days since Lula returned to power, Brazil has sought, from its traditional position of neutrality, to establish an independent profile in its international relations: it has refused to send weapons to Ukraine, it has defended dialogue with the regime in Nicaragua and has allowed Iranian ships to dock on its coast.
The Brazilian leader will also present to his Chinese counterpart his proposal that a group of non-aligned countries try to persuade Russia and Ukraine to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict; He believes that China can play an important role in this third way and is very aware that a large part of the planet is far from the positions of NATO and the West and prefers not to join either side.
It is a vision of a multipolar world compatible with China that is intended to be promoted through its Global Security Initiative (ISG), officially presented last February. The ISG opposes sanctions (which Brazil does not support either), points out that the great powers must facilitate peace negotiations and mediate “taking into account the needs of the countries involved” and rejects “the confrontation between blocks and hegemony”.
Beijing, which has maintained a calculated equidistance chosen from Moscow since the start of the war, issued a 12-point proposal coinciding with the anniversary of the start of the conflict to reach a “peaceful solution to the crisis.” Unlike Xi, who has not officially opposed the Russian invasion or spoken to the Ukrainian president since the Kremlin decided to cross the neighboring country’s borders with its tanks, Lula has condemned the invasion and went so far as to present his Mediation initiative in a video call conversation. However, he recently said that perhaps kyiv should give up taking back Crimea.
China believes that, under Lula, Brazilian diplomacy will be reoriented towards defending the values of the Global South and, most importantly, it will distance itself from the United States, analysts from the Latin American Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences say in a report. social. “China sees Brazil as an important partner to promote globalization, modify the current international order and give rise to a multipolar world,” so “we should expect Beijing to recover Brasilia’s desire to play a greater role in international affairs.” global ”, say these experts.
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“The international community is interested in knowing what approach the two main emerging countries of the eastern and western hemispheres can propose to facilitate global governance and mediate geopolitical conflicts,” the newspaper quoted Tuesday. GlobalTimes Wang Youming, director of the Institute for Emerging Countries belonging to the Chinese Institute of International Studies in Beijing.
Before arriving in the capital, Lula will make a stop in the financial heart of China, Shanghai. There he attended the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff as president of the New Development Bank of the BRICS, the experiment of the bloc of emerging countries that marked the beginning of the 21st century. The appointment supposes the political rehabilitation of the ousted ex-president.
The New Development Bank was created in 2014 by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects in member countries and with the aspiration of serving as an alternate to the traditional international financial organizations dominated by the United States and the European Union. In a statement published by the Brazilian news agency Agência Brasil, they highlight the two challenges that the new president will face: promoting projects related to the environment and “avoiding the geopolitical impact of Western reprisals against Russia, one of the founding partners.”
In the commercial field, Lula trusts that his meeting with Xi will give the definitive impetus to some negotiations such as the sale of 20 Embraer planes. Another agreement he would like to close has a strong symbolic charge: that the Chinese electric car company BYD buy the factory in the State of Bahia where the American Ford manufactured cars until it closed it two years ago and ended its operations in Brazil. The first economic power in Latin America wants to expand and diversify trade relations. “We don’t want the Chinese to understand our things, what we want is to build alliances so they can invest in things that don’t exist,” Lula said in an interview before departure.
For its part, China’s main objective is for Brazil to join the New Silk Road initiative, the ambitious and multimillion-dollar infrastructure network with which the Asian giant aspires to connect with the rest of the world. This strategic plan of Beijing, which bears the seal of President Xi, celebrates a decade in 2023 and, since its launch, 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed cooperation agreements. “Given that the Brazilian economy is facing great challenges, Brazil needs to attract more foreign investment to boost its economy and China, the second largest economy on the planet, could lend a hand in this regard,” the official newspaper wrote in March. china diary Feng Da Hsuan, honorary dean, and Liang Haiming, dean of the Belt and Road Research Institute [el nombre oficial del proyecto chino] from Hainan University.
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