Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wants to improve his country’s relationship with Beijing in order to reorient the global political order, possibly boosting Chinese plans to counter decades of US preeminence in world affairs.
(Bloomberg) — Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wants to improve his country’s relationship with Beijing in order to reorient the global political order, possibly boosting Chinese plans to counter decades of US preeminence in world affairs.
“Our interests in the relationship with China are not just commercial,” Lula said during a meeting with Zhao Leji, the chairman of China’s National Peoples Congress standing committee, in Beijing on Friday. “We have political interests and we have interests in building a new geopolitics so that we can change world governance by giving more representation to the United Nations.”
The Brazilian leader’s trip to China was broadly pitched as an opportunity to strengthen economic and trade ties between the two nations. Russia’s war in Ukraine, meanwhile, was likely to take center stage in Friday’s bilateral meeting between Lula and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as both leaders seek larger diplomatic roles in global efforts to restore peace.
Read More: Xi Hosts Brazil’s Lula in Diplomatic Push for Ukraine Cease-Fire
But Lula’s global political and economic ambitions have also featured prominently in the trip. On Thursday, he called for the creation of an alternative currency to replace the dollar in foreign trade transactions between the BRICS nations, a bloc that along with China and Brazil includes Russia, India and South Africa.
He also planned to push China to back Brazil’s desire to win a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and on Friday said that part of changing the global governance structure would involve United Nations reform.
Read More: Lula Backs BRICS Currency to Replace Dollar in Foreign Trade
“The United Nations needs to have the strength to coordinate the balance that the world needs for people to live in peace,” he said in Beijing.
The comments are likely to raise eyebrows in the US, which ranks as Brazil’s second-largest trading partner, after China. Lula visited the White House in February and has sought to strengthen relations with both nations even as the global economic and geopolitical rivalry between them intensifies.
Lula’s visit to a Huawei Technologies facility in Shanghai on Thursday also held the potential to irk the US, which has sanctioned the technology company over national security concerns. Foreign minister Mauro Vieira told reporters ahead of the China trip that the Huawei visit shouldn’t be seen as a provocation in the US. Lula defended the stop on Friday, saying that it was meant to demonstrate that Brazil “has no prejudice against the Chinese people.”
“Nobody is going to forbid Brazil from improving its relationship with China,” he said.
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