Brazilian President Lula in China

CGTN Europe

Larissa Wachholz, Senior Fellow for Asia Program at CEBRI (Brazilian Center for International Relations) discusses the strong and dynamic relationship between Brazil and China.

Transcript

00:00Larissa Vaholtz is the Senior Fellow for the Asia Programme at the Brazilian Center for International Relations.

00:08It is a very stable and a very good relationship in general.

00:13Trade is reaching record numbers in the latest years.

00:20And not only this is the second visit of President Lula to China,

00:23but also in the meantime, President Xi Jinping has been to Brazil in November last year.

00:28So it really shows how dynamic the relationship is at the moment.

00:33So I would say that it is indeed a very active and a relationship that Brazil praises very much.

00:43And so focusing in on trade, China has been Brazil's top trading partner for the past 16 consecutive years.

00:50What do you think has sustained this relationship and do you see any room for expansion in it?

00:55Yeah, I think the major pillar of the trade relationship is really the fact that it's quite complementary

01:02in the sense that with China's economic development and the rural urban migration,

01:11China has been really in need of a number of natural resources that Brazil has in abundancy.

01:19So oil, iron ore, soybeans have been the three major products that Brazil has been exporting to China.

01:29And in the past few years, some other products were added, like beef,

01:35which is a very important product for Brazil because it's more value added than soybeans.

01:43The soybeans from Brazil to China are basically used for animal feed.

01:47So I think the biggest pillar is really the complementarity in the two sides.

01:52On the other hand, Brazil has been buying more industrialized goods from China, manufactured goods.

01:59But in this relationship, Brazil has a major surplus, trade surplus with China.

02:05Actually, the surplus with China is responsible for Brazil having a surplus on its international trade as a whole,

02:13which is very positive. And obviously, Brazil is very happy about that.

02:17So dynamism and complementarity seem to be the watchwords when it comes to trade.

02:22Switching now to the diplomatic front, given President Lula's visits to both Beijing and Moscow,

02:27how is Brazil positioning itself amid growing east-west tension?

02:33Well, Brazil has a diplomatic tradition of really keeping, let's say, a good relationship with all the major powers around, right?

02:44So it really tries to have a foreign policy as an instrument for economic development.

02:52And that means that you need to be open to dialogue and partnerships with the different global powers.

03:00Brazil is not a global power, right?

03:02Brazil is a mid-sized economy, and Brazil is trying to develop relationships that can help the country fix its most important challenges.

03:16Brazil is a major partner and member country of the BRICS, and this year Brazil will preside over the BRICS summit that is taking place in July.

03:28So it is quite normal, let's say, that really Brazil tries to navigate among the different partners

03:36and tries to take advantage of these different relationships to deal with its issues of a developing country.

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