On April 14, 2023, Brazilian president Lula da Silva arrived at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to meet with President Xi Jinping on his official state visit, his first since being reelected into the presidency in January 2023. Welcoming him was a band playing a popular Brazilian song released in 1980, called “Um Novo Tempo” (“A New Era”) by Ivan Lins, a song marking the transition out of a twenty-year military dictatorship. “A New Era” also fittingly describes the new stage that Lula’s return signified for China-Brazil relations, which had been strained under former president Jair Bolsonaro.
In 1993, Brazil was the first country to establish a “strategic partnership” with China, a relationship that has deepened and broadened at an impressive rate since. In fact, according to the Brazilian government, since Lula’s first visit to China twenty years ago in 2004, trade between the two countries had increased twenty-one times, with Brazilian exports surpassing the $100 billion barrier for the first time this year. Lula’s visit resulted in fifteen agreements and $10 billion in investments from China, which included expanded collaboration in space, digital economy, the automotive industry, and renewable energy, among others sectors.
This year, Brazil and China celebrate fifty years of official diplomatic relations. In this historic year, there are a few highly anticipated events, including the June meeting of the Sino-Brazilian High-Level Partnership and Cooperation Commission, the main mechanism of bilateral dialogue created during Lula’s first term. The presidents are set to meet during Xi’s November state visit to Brazil, which is hosting the G20 Leaders’ Summit. The importance of the Sino-Brazilian relationship cannot be underestimated in the context of the rise of the Global South, the decline of U.S. hegemony, and the emergence of a New Cold War. With a look back into the history of bilateral relations, how can we understand the importance of these two countries in the current conjuncture in pushing forward changes unseen in a century?
