BRASILIA, March 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing next week, where he hopes to reinforce trade, discuss international mediation in Ukraine, and
reclaim his country’s role in global geopolitics.
After a period of isolation under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, Lula is wasting no time in renewing ties with allies.
Just three months into his latest term as president, he has already visited Argentina and the United States — and the six-day trip to China, Brazil’s largest trading partner, is key to his ambitions.
Ukraine will be a main topic of discussion during the visit, which officially begins Tuesday, with Lula hoping to promote his proposal for mediated talks to end Russia’s invasion of the country.
Xi himself will be fresh from talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this week, where he also presented himself as a peace-seeking mediator — though he made no apparent breakthrough.
Lula sees China as an “important ally” of his own initiative of creating a group of countries seeking a negotiated peace deal, the government in Brasilia said in a statement.
Lula, who has been president of Brazil twice before, is keen to position the South American giant as a go-between, like he did during his second term of office during nuclear discussions between Iran and the United States.
Trade will also be high on the agenda in Beijing, with Lula traveling to China alongside a large business and ministerial entourage.
Bolsonaro also visited China, but that relationship soured after he joined then-US president Donald Trump in blaming Beijing for the Covid-19 pandemic.
That did not affect business dealings, though, with commercial exchanges last year surpassing $150 billion.
Brazil received a boost on Thursday when China decided to lift a month-long suspension of Brazilian beef imports after an “isolated” case of mad cow disease was confirmed in February.
Brazil was also the main destination for Chinese investment in Latin America between 2007 and 2020, according to the Brazil-China Business Council, worth $70 billion.
The money was mostly invested in oil and electricity generation, but also in the automobile industry, heavy machinery, mining, agriculture and information technology.
Brazil is a huge market for Chinese companies, such as technology giant Huawei.
And an agreement between the two countries to use the yuan in bilateral multi-million dollar trade could help internationalize the Chinese currency.
Lula made multilateral diplomacy a priority in his previous two terms as president, and visited Beijing three times.
It was during his watch that the BRICS group of emerging economies comprising Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa was created.
In Beijing, Lula will also meet with Premier Li Qiang and Zhao Leji, president of the Popular Assembly.
He will head to Shanghai where his domestic political ally Dilma Rousseff, who succeeded him as president in 2011, is due to take over as head of the New Development Bank, also known as the BRICS bank.
On his way home, Lula will visit the United Arab Emirates for two days. — NNN-AGENCIES
