Brazilian president says the two countries will work to ‘balance world geopolitics’
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva struck a unified pose in defiance of U.S. foreign and trade policy in a meeting in Beijing on Friday, adding weight to Beijing’s pushback against what it sees as a Washington-led containment effort.
“We will work to expand trade and balance world geopolitics,” Mr. da Silva wrote on Twitter after meeting with Mr. Xi.
Mr. Xi called the Brazilian leader an “old friend of the Chinese people” who has “promoted breakthrough developments in relations between the two countries.”
Mr. da Silva spent two days traveling through China before meeting with Mr. Xi, part of an effort by the leftist Brazilian leader to deepen ties with his country’s largest trading partner following a period of relative isolation under his right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
He was greeted by Mr. Xi outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where they reviewed a Chinese military honor guard and walked past dozens of children waving Chinese and Brazilian flags.
In contrast to Mr. Bolsonaro and his pro-Washington stance, Mr. da Silva has used his trip to push for a greater role for China and Brazil in the global economic infrastructure. During a speech in Shanghai on Thursday, he took aim at the global dominance of the U.S. dollar, a nod to Beijing’s bid to boost the role of the Chinese yuan in trade.
“Every night I ask myself why every country needs to trade in the dollar,” Mr. da Silva said in his speech, delivered at the inauguration of his ally, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, as president of the New Development Bank, a multilateral institution founded by members of the Brics, a group of large developing nations that includes Brazil and China. “Who decided it was the dollar after the disappearance of the gold standard?”
Mr. da Silva’s trip, which follows recent visits to China by leaders from France, Spain, Singapore, Malaysia and the European Commission, will help Mr. Xi’s efforts to develop China’s global clout, analysts said.
“Xi’s positioned China as a place where you can hedge for better deals, where you can push back against the U.S. a little more,” said Manoj Kewalramani, a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution, an Indian think tank. “To that effect, he’s been successful.”
The Chinese leader’s meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron yielded a diplomatic victory for Beijing after Mr. Macron argued Europe shouldn’t follow the lead of the U.S. in its tensions with China over Taiwan. Mr. Xi gave little ground in return, making no firm commitment to Mr. Macron’s plea that he use his influence to “bring Russia to its senses” to stop its war in Ukraine.
Messrs. Xi and da Silva have both raised concerns about how the Ukraine conflict is affecting the Global South, as the war disrupts supply chains and causes commodity prices to fluctuate.
