Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was yesterday meeting with Chinese leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), as the Latin American leader looks to balance his tilt toward the US.
At a forum in Beijing, Bolsonaro said that China and Brazil “were born to walk together. I now shake President Xi’s hand as a sign that our governments are completely aligned, in a way that reaches beyond our commercial and business relationship.”
At the same event, Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua (胡春華) said that China was willing to increase its imports of agricultural and industrial goods from Brazil, and that the two nations can also deepen cooperation in areas such as infrastructure.
Bolsonaro was later to meet Xi as part of a three-day state visit to the Chinese capital. He was also to meet with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) and Chinese National People’s Congress Standing Committee Chairman Li Zhanshu (栗戰書), the No. 2 and No. 3-ranked members of the Chinese Communist Party.
Bolsonaro on Thursday arrived in Beijing facing a looming question of whether Brazil should allow Huawei Technologies to build its 5G network. The decision risks upsetting the delicate balancing act Bolsonaro has so far managed between China and the US, its first and second-biggest trading partners.
Xi is expected to pay a reciprocal visit to Brazil next month while in South America for APEC forum meetings in Chile.
China’s vast appetite for commodities helped drive up total trade between the two countries to US$113 billion last year and the South American nation is its eighth-biggest trading partner.
Beijing will probably grant more approvals in the next few weeks for Brazilian meat plants to export to China, Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply Tereza Cristina said in a video posted on her Twitter on Thursday.
Beijing last month granted permission to 25 additional Brazilian beef, pork and poultry plants to ship to China, raising the number of approved facilities to 89.
While Bolsonaro was being accompanied by his foreign and agriculture ministers for this week’s state visit, members of his economic team are to arrive at a later date.
“The absence of senior economic advisers suggests there won’t be any major announcements besides a possible increase in commodity deals,” said Hussein Kalout, a Harvard University political scientist and one of Brazil’s leading academics on international relations.
About 40 percent of Brazilian exports, mostly commodities, head to China. Chinese companies also invest heavily in Brazil, which is seeking foreign investors to participate in its privatization program to accelerate its sluggish economic growth.
Bolsonaro has long been a fan of US President Donald Trump and he expressed skepticism over Beijing’s investment prior to his election victory last year, saying that Chinese were allowed to “buy in Brazil, but not buy Brazil.”
However, Bolsonaro has since toned down some of his criticism and adopted a pragmatic approach.
In May, he sent Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao to smooth over any awkwardness with Beijing. While there, Mourao met with Huawei’s billionaire founder, Ren Zhengfei (任正非), and said that Brazil had no intention of restricting the firm’s activities in the country.
The company has been active in Brazil for more than 20 years.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS