From Rio de Janeiro
The end of the USSR and the socialist camp led the United States to declare the triumph of the unipolar world, under North American hegemony. The globalization of the neoliberal model was articulated with this perspective, projecting a politically and economically unipolar world.
However, this expectation changed relatively quickly.. The Sino-Russian alliance contradicted American hopes and pointed in a different direction.
China was coming out of the long period to which it was condemned since the invasion of British forces, which introduced the consumption of opium – cultivated in the other British colony, India – and, with it, its decline. The vigorous recovery of the Chinese economy boosted, at the same time, China’s leadership in Asia and its projection to other continents – Latin America and Africa.
Lula’s trip has enormous economic and political significance. First, it represents the end of the unipolar world, with the end of US hegemony in the world. Exchanges between China, Brazil and Russia strengthen the Brics and a multipolar world.
Lula’s journey
Before Lula da Silva’s trip to China, Xi-Jinping was with Putin in Russia. Celso Amorim went to Russia and met with Putin. After Lula’s visit to China, Lavrov comes to Brazil. Peace in Ukraine is certainly on the agenda of the meetings, but also economic issues.
At the political level, the immediate issue is the peace agreement for Ukraine. Brazil and China agreed on the terms they have to propose for the end of the war. At the same time, the strengthening of the Brics is a central objective, because it is in this organization that the forces that fight for a multipolar world are concentrated.
At the economic level, the central objective is the de-dollarization of economic relations, not only between the two countries, but also at the general economic level. A project for the creation of a common currency for South America, formulated by Brazil, would move in this direction.
But a more general agreement, focused on the Brics, with China and Brazil as sectors that promote it, represents a radical change in international economic relations. The dollar has been the world currency since the end of World War II, which consolidated US hegemony in the world.
Hence the panic of the United States and of all the analysts who defend their interests in the media, with the advances -already irreversible- of the de-dollarization process.
Brazil signed 15 agreements with China, which diversify economic relations between the two countries, representing a large flow of Chinese investment in Brazil.
The year 2023 thus clearly promotes the end of the unipolar world, with the United States as the only world superpower. The United States has never been so isolated in Latin America, which had always been the region of privileged hegemony of the United States.
Mexico, Colombia and Chile had been the privileged countries of the United States alliance on the continent. Today, none of them play that role anymore. The smaller countries remain, such as Ecuador and Uruguay, with conservative governments. Never before have so many governments in Latin America deviated from the neoliberal model proposed by the United States.
Added to this is the consolidation of China as the main economic partner of the continent. The presence of Brazil in the BRICS, in turn, expresses the presence of Latin America in the main space for the construction of a multipolar world.
The world will not be the same after Lula’s trip to China, the agreements signed on that trip and, above all, the close collaboration between the two countries. What is clear is that the unipolar world and the North American hegemony that existed until recently in the world are over.