Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he wants to work with Beijing to “balance world geopolitics” as he wrapped up a three-day visit to China aimed at deepening ties between the two nations .
“We want to raise the level of strategic partnership between our countries, expand trade flows and balance world geopolitics together with China,” said Lula, who since returning to office for a third term in January has been trying to reassert Brazil’s role in the international Stage.
The 77-year-old has particularly advocated for the creation of a more multipolar world and the revitalization of multilateral organizations – issues dear to Beijing’s international diplomacy.
Lula received a warm welcome in China, where he was greeted by cheering children dancing to the Brazilian song Novo Tempo and hailed as his “good old friend” by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two sides signed more than a dozen agreements worth $10 billion in areas ranging from infrastructure investment to satellite construction to trade facilitation.
Brazil and China are both members of the Brics Association, a group of developing countries that also includes India, Russia and South Africa, which Lula has been trying to strengthen since returning to office.
During a speech in Shanghai on Thursday, he urged the group to develop an alternative currency to the dollar for trade between them.
“Every night I wonder why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar,” Lula said, raising an eyebrow at Washington policymakers.
The Brazilian leader proposed another note of defiance to Washington in another speech he gave alongside Xi, in which Lula noted that he had visited Chinese telecom company Huawei, which is subject to US sanctions.
“Yesterday we paid a visit to Huawei to show the world that we are not biased in our relations with the Chinese and that no one will stop Brazil from improving its relations with China,” Lula said.
In a previous meeting with Zhao Leji, the head of the country’s Stamp Parliament and the third-highest ranking Communist Party official, Lula underscored his ambition to restore balance to the world order.
“Our interests in relations with China are not just commercial. We have political interests and we have an interest in building a new geopolitics to change world governance by giving the United Nations more representation,” Lula said.
The focus on multilateralism is a marked departure from the approach of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who prioritized bilateral ties with the US under former President Donald Trump and other nations led by populist leaders like Hungary and Israel.
“It’s a universalist foreign policy,” Mauro Vieira, Brazil’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times last month.
Before visiting Beijing, Lula had said he would discuss with Xi the formation of a “peace club” of countries to mediate an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
In a joint statement on Friday, both countries stressed that the only way out of the Ukraine conflict was through negotiations. But while the message on Ukraine reflected some of China’s points, it did not fully reflect Beijing’s position paper on the conflict, which the West has criticized as pro-Russia.
On Saturday morning, in brief remarks to the media, Lula reiterated an idea he had previously voiced of forming a club of like-minded nations not involved in the war to discuss peace, with China possibly playing a role. He also urged the US to stop “inciting” the war.
“Another important country is the USA. That means the US needs to stop promoting war and start talking about peace,” Lula said. He added that Europe must also talk about peace so that Russia and Ukraine would gradually realize that the whole world wanted an end to the war.
“Lula believes Brazil can contribute, especially when it comes to the war between Russia and Ukraine. A lot of people take that as naive [but] Lula understands that China is a key player in trying to put pressure on Russia,” said Felipe Loureiro, professor of international relations at the University of São Paulo.
“The difficulty is that China takes a clear pro-Russian stance despite positioning itself as a neutral country.”
At a news conference at the Brazilian embassy late Friday night, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad defended the country’s overtures to China, saying they were not intended to alienate the US.
“The country [Brazil] is too big to choose partners,” Haddad told reporters. “Brazil has the size to partner with these big blocs and with other countries in bilateral deals. It doesn’t make sense that you’re forced to make a choice, that you have to distance yourself from the other when approaching one.”