The highly anticipated Brazilian presidential election has finally come to an end. The 77-year-old Lula defeated the current president Bolsonaro by a slight advantage and returned to politics. Lula's election not only means that the political trend of Brazil has completed a "left turn", but it is more interesting to note whether Lula will regain its early Chinese policy after she officially took office as Brazilian president, and will China's bilateral relations with Brazil usher in rapid development again?
Considering that Brazil is a core member of the BRICS countries, Lula repeatedly emphasized during the election campaign that it is necessary to revive Brazil's economy through the BRICS framework. If we start from this perspective, the prospects for cooperation between China and Brazil are broad.
【77-year-old Lula wins the election】
Latin American scholars wrote an article saying that as Brazil's largest trading partner, China has become a prominent topic during the Brazilian election in recent times. The new president may solve a series of economic and environmental problems through active contact with China.
However, the above views still only revolve around the current economic and trade framework between China and Brazil, and instead deliberately ignore the possibility of deepening cooperation between the two countries in the political field. As both developing countries , China and Brazil actually have a considerable consensus on many global issues, which is even enough to surpass ideological bias.
It has to be mentioned here that although Lula and Bolsonaro were very strong during the campaign, they both tacitly did not hype China's topics, which shows that although the two have different political views, they fundamentally understand and maintain diplomatic and economic and trade relations with China, which is related to their political experience.
[Lula and Bolsonaro debate]
For Lula, during the past two presidency, he has strengthened his cooperation with the countries of BRICS and actively sought trade and investment from China. As for the Bolsonaro government, although in the early days of taking office, it briefly neglected its relations with China for ideological reasons, Bolsonaro soon found that the road was blocked and had to re-adopt the original policy. Therefore, both sides know the importance of cooperation with China.
So, how is the broad prospects of cooperation between China and Brazil reflected in the economic and political fields? Currently, Brazil's inflation rate is 7.1% and unemployment rate is 9.3%. It can be foreseen that after Lula came to power, he will inevitably regard revitalizing Brazil's economy as a priority. In addition, given that during Bolsonaro's administration, he excessively pursued economic development and ignored the protection of local ecological diversity, which caused the Amazon rainforest to be damaged, and the logging rate remained high, which greatly damaged Brazil's international image in the field of environmental protection. Therefore, Lula also promised that the General will be committed to sustainable development.
[Lula will be committed to deepening cooperation with China under the framework of BRICS]
It is not difficult to see that the future policy focus of the Lula government is nothing more than two major areas of economy and environment. So, what impact will this have on China-Brazil's bilateral relations?
Here we first need to sort out the development of bilateral economic and trade between China and Brazil. Since the beginning of the 21st century, economic relations between Brazil and China have developed rapidly because China has a huge demand for raw materials such as agriculture, energy and minerals, and Brazil happens to be the main exporter of the above products and has strong market competitiveness.
Therefore, since 2009, China has become the main destination for Brazil's raw material exports, and trade integration with China has led to a huge leap in Brazil's export scope and scale, and has brought generous profits to Brazil's agricultural producers, oil sector and mineral extractors. As of August 2022, Brazil's trade surplus with China reached US$1.53 billion. The bilateral trade surplus is more beneficial to Brazil because it can increase Brazil's international monetary reserves and reduce its external economic vulnerability.
[The main purpose of Lula after taking office will be to improve the domestic economic situation]
However, although the momentum of bilateral trade between Brazil and China is very strong, Brazil's exports to China are basically concentrated in the field of raw materials, and the economic structure has a very obvious focus. In other words, it is very serious "relative to science and technology".After Lula won the election, he emphasized that while rebuilding the economy, the new government should also explore sustainable development, and regard the latter as one of the channels to enhance international influence. This shows that Brazil is no longer satisfied with being an exporter of raw materials. It will actively explore the possibility of economic structural transformation and actively develop renewable energy . In the field of renewable energy, China has technical advantages. In addition, China adheres to the new development concept of innovation, coordination, green, open and shared, which can also be used as a reference and reference for the new Brazilian government that is determined to maintain the ecological environment of the Amazon rainforest.
[How the Lula government will formulate a policy toward China is worth looking forward to]
Therefore, the new Brazilian government, the future policy toward China, may experience major structural transformation, and the traditional trade pattern between China and Brazil will also change as a result. Through economic structural transformation, Brazil will establish more diversified economic and trade ties with China. The same is true in the political field. In addition to consistent exchanges and anti-hegemony, in the field of climate change, Brazil can also join forces with China to fight against the political propaganda of the United States and the West, and contribute its own strength to developing countries for the right to survive and discourse.
