50 years of the Brazil-China diplomatic relations: Celebrating the past and launching the foundations of the future (China Daily, 8/19/2024)

By Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

SHI YU/CHINA DAILY

On Aug 15, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between the Federative Republic of Brazil and the People's Republic of China. Throughout these 50 years, we have built a strategic partnership that strengthened our peoples' commercial, cultural, scientific, and technological ties.

As president of Brazil, I am proud to have contributed to further developing this prolific cooperation. On my first visit to Beijing in 2004, we strengthened the Strategic Partnership by creating the High-Level Sino-Brazilian Commission on Consultation and Cooperation (COSBAN), which is key for the coordination of our actions in several sectors and for deepening the integration of our governments and societies.

Since 2009, China has consolidated its position as our major commercial partner. In the last seven years, Brazil has been China's main external food provider, having contributed to its food security.

In 2023, bilateral trade reached a record of $157 billion, with Brazil's unprecedented superavit of $51 billion. Our exports totaled $104 billion, exceeding the combined sum of our sales to the United States and the European Union.

Brazil was also the fourth major destination of Chinese investments abroad, representing 4.8 percent of the global total, according to the China-Brazil Business Council (CBBC). These investments are vital for the development and modernization of our infrastructure and industry, and are in synergy with the new Growth Acceleration Program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento — PAC) and the New Industry Brazil program (Nova Indústria Brasil).

Our bilateral relations are not limited to the exportation of agricultural products. On the contrary, our relationship's strategic dimension precedes the success of our commercial exchanges. The Earth-Resources Satellite (CBERS) project, launched in 1988, is a milestone of South-South cooperation in high technology, strengthening space infrastructure, and boosting research, innovation, and co-development in critical sectors.

For these reasons, China was one of the first countries I visited at the beginning of my third term. On the occasion, I highlighted our desire for Brazil-China relations to transcend commercial exchanges.

In the same way that the CBERS was fundamental for our countries to dominate aerospatial technologies 40 years ago, I trust that we will be able to seek new areas in the frontiers of knowledge to ground our cooperation for the next 50 years, such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and renewable energy sources.

We will seek to solidify the connections between our universities to increase the number of exchange students and researchers. We want more Chinese people to visit Brazil as tourists and more Brazilians to visit China. We hope to work together in facing climate change and transitioning to clean energies, particularly from wind, solar, and biomass sources.

Beyond this dense bilateral agenda, China and Brazil are long-standing partners at the BRICS, the G20, the United Nations, and several other International forums. We work together to promote peace, security, and development. We support the global governance reform to make it more efficient, fair, and representative of the interests of the Global South.

The close coordination between our countries on issues of global interest will continue to contribute to a multipolar world order, grounded on the values of multilateralism and international law. The common appreciation for dialogue allows us to promote solutions based on diplomacy and negotiation, as demonstrated in our joint proposal for the conflict in Ukraine.

Over these solid foundations, China and Brazil are paving the right way to elevate the Global Strategic Partnership to a new level, with a strong component of technological cooperation and the ability to promote truly transformative results for our societies.

It is in this spirit that Brazil will welcome the state visit of President Xi Jinping to our country in November.

The author is President of Brazil. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Originally published at https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202408/15/WS66bd306aa3104e74fddba011.html