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.
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
Another tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG (liquefied natural gas) 2 project has docked in a Chinese port, ship-tracking data showed, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) tracking data indicated the Russian Voskhod LNG tanker was anchored at an LNG terminal in the port of Tieshan in Guangxi, China. The Russian flagged tanker, with a cargo of 150,000 cubic meters of LNG, was loaded up at the Arctic LNG 2 facility in Gydan in northern Siberia on July 19, LSEG data showed.
RSS