After passing through Shanghai, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lands in Beijing, on an official trip that has as its high point the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The visit aims to strengthen trade ties between Brasilia and Beijing. Brazilian businessmen who already work between the two countries hope that Lula’s visit will be the occasion to sign concrete agreements in other areas, far beyond the commoditieswhich currently represent most of the exchanges between China and Brazil.
China has been Brazil’s main trading partner since 2009. But if, on the one hand, Brazil essentially exports soybeans, iron ore, meat and oil, more than 90% of sales made by China to Brazilians are processing industry products.
China is also one of the main sources of investment in Brazil. According to data from the Brazilian government, between 2007 and 2021, the country was the fourth main international destination for Chinese investment. Still according to Brasília, the sectors with the largest Chinese contributions were electricity (45.5%), oil and gas extraction (30.9%).
“Brazil has been doing an excellent job and thanks to that it has a healthy trade balance in terms of agribusiness and also minerals.”, summarizes Jessé Efraim, vice-president of BraCham, the of companies Brazilian in China for Industry, Commerce and Technology. But the engineer, who has lived in China for ten years, where he works mainly in the area of infrastructure and transport, estimates that this relationship should evolve.
“A The community of Brazilian businessmen or representatives of large companies is waiting for agreements to be more focused on the exchange and transfer of technology”, explains Efraim. “People expect that the part of smart cities or also biotechnology, economics and green energy to be more developed. For this, we hope that there are bilateral technology transfer agreements where both countries benefit”, he insists.
O BraCham’s vice president gives examples of possible projects in the area of civil construction, security, or even hospital equipment. “Brazil does not have a hospital equipment industry and is dependent on German, Canadian, French or some Chinese companies. This would help a lot to reduce costs and also access to health for the population”, he points out.
Paradigm change
The recent change of government in Brazil may contribute to further boost relations between Beijing and Brasília, even if Efraim points out that business between the two countries was never interrupted during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro. “China has always been open and always will be for any president,” he says. “I talk to some representatives of the Chinese government in Beijing and I always hear the same thing: it doesn’t matter if it’s side A or side B, but who is in charge of the country. They’reare not open to talk to anyone”, explains the engineer, who has accompanied official visits by other Brazilian presidents to the asian country.
Even so, politics ends up weighing on trade relations. “What seems to me, being in China these ten years, is that, in some cases, some representatives end up understanding that the Chinese government weighs on a certain side. And that’s not the mentality. The Chinese government is open. But when a representative takes a step back, this obviously generates results a little slower”, he explains. “But in the current management, both sides are fully willing and with enough energy to work”, he celebrates.