Lula hands Brazil over to China and feels bad for the US and Europe
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Celebrated by the government, Lula’s visit to China resulted in the promise of investments of R$ 50 billion in Brazil. Agreements were signed in areas of mutual interest, such as infrastructure, technology and agribusiness. The president, however, wanted to go a step further: in several statements, he gave clear signs of political alignment with an authoritarian regime that wants to take over Taiwan and that is barely able to hide its support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Few details were released about the terms of the various pacts signed by Lula and his ministers. But China’s history of foreign relations towards countries in Africa and Latin America reveals an aggressive strategy, of increasing influence over the internal affairs of countries and access to natural assets or valuable territories, in exchange for investments.
The president and his entourage celebrated and sold the commitments signed as signs of pragmatism, that what matters is to strengthen exchanges with Brazil’s main trading partner. But by defending that Taiwan, a healthy democracy, is an “inseparable part of China”, and that Russia and Ukraine are equally to blame for the war, Lula has fully adhered to the geopolitical interests of Beijing, which seeks to establish itself as a global power that despises values western countries that Brazil should defend.
By pleasing China and Russia so much, Brazil turns its back on the United States and Europe, much more attentive to the dangers represented by the two countries. Furthermore, Lula’s attempt to position himself as a mediator for peace in Ukraine struck US and European officials as naive and pretentious.
How and to what extent do the commitments assumed by Lula leave Brazil at the mercy of China? Will his declarations, to the taste of Beijing, against the United States and Europe, distance us from these allies? This is the theme of this Monday’s (17th) Second Opinion, with Renan Ramalho, Paula Marisa, Flávio Gordon and Adriano Soares da Costa.
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