Observer: China, Brazil to promote more cooperation

By Jiang Shixue

People's Daily app

15:07, May 30, 2024

Celso Amorim, special advisor to the Brazilian President, visited China for a week from May 22 to May 29. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brazil, and it holds the potential for new cooperation between the two countries.

Over the past five decades, China-Brazil political relations, trade cooperation, economic cooperation and cultural exchanges have flourished. China-Brazil cooperation has become a model of South-South cooperation.

China and Brazil share extensive common interests. China has always viewed and developed its relations with Brazil from a strategic and long-term perspective, placing China-Brazil relations as a diplomatic priority.

In the future, the development of bilateral relations can be further promoted in the following areas:

First, China can invest more in improving Brazil’s infrastructure and economic structure. Brazil's infrastructure is still underdeveloped, and its economy is too dependent on primary industries. Investment is indispensable to solving these problems. For Brazil, Chinese investment can play an emergency role.

Second, Brazil and China will continue to be win-win trade partners. Since reform and opening-up, China has needed to import primary products, while Brazil produces a variety of agricultural products and raw materials. Brazil’s manufacturing capabilities could be more robust, and industrial products would need to be imported. Brazil is thus not only a large market for China’s industrial products but also one of the best partners for China’s overseas manufacturing cooperation.

In addition to bilateral relations and economic development, there are opportunities for multilateral cooperation.

First, the two countries can make joint efforts to promote cooperation between China and Latin America as a whole. China has been pursuing “collecitive cooperation” with the region, whose 33 countries established the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2011. The China-CELAC Forum was set up in 2014 as a mechanism of “collective cooperation” between China and the region. In pursuing this goal, Brazil's status cannot be underestimated, and China and Brazil need to work together.

Second, the two countries can strengthen coordination and promote cooperation within the BRICS countries. With the expansion of BRICS, policy coordination and economic cooperation have become more complicated. Future BRICS cooperation can only be guaranteed with coordination by China and Brazil.

The two countries can communicate and collaborate on setting the agenda and implementing leaders' summit declarations.

Third, China and Brazil can play an important role in promoting global governance. In a world of change and turmoil, global governance is the answer to global issues.

However, many developed countries’ positions pose obstacles to that very governance. For example, Washington's suppression of China's new energy products is obviously not conducive to global climate and environmental governance. China and Brazil should strengthen cooperation and unequivocally oppose the “say-one-thing-do-another” approach of a few countries.

(The author is a research fellow of the Institute of Contemporary China Studies at Sichuan International Studies University; Translated by Liu Yulin and Lin Rui)

原文链接：https://peoplesdaily.pdnews.cn/opinions/er/30045091618