Bolsonaro ignores promises and ideology and intensifies trade with China.
If Bolsonarism’s discourse tried to turn China into a kind of international villain and the target of accusations about the communist offensive in the world, the reality is that Jair Bolsonaro ’s mandate ends with the commercial and investment relationship between the two countries breaking all records .
The numbers contrast with the constant attacks by former Chancellor Ernesto Araújo against Beijing, contradict the president's speeches against the Chinese vaccine and show the failure of the strategy adopted by Itamaraty in the early years of the government to undermine any rapprochement between Brasilia and Beijing.
In the government, in the first months of 2019, the order was to promote a total rapprochement with the US of Donald Trump and even forge diplomatic alliances against the Asian country. At UN meetings, Chinese communism was denounced by the Itamaraty, while the then Health Minister Luis Henrique Mandetta even confessed that any rapprochement between his portfolio and China was undermined by the Executive.
The reality was very different from Bolsonarist discourse. Data from the government itself indicated that, until the end of November, China represented 27% of all exports from Brazil to the world. In other words: out of every four dollars that the country earns on the international market with its sales, one comes from China.
Taken together, the five main destinations for Brazilian exports after China do not reach the value of the Beijing market for domestic goods. The American market is responsible for consuming 11% of Brazil's sales to the world, against 4.7% in Argentina, 3.6% in the Netherlands, 3% in Spain and 2.7% in Chile.
What happened in Bolsonaro's four years? In short, Brazil and China intensified their commercial and investment relationship in an unprecedented way, surpassing any other moment in Brazil's recent history. The first year of the government, in 2019, ended with Brazilian exports to China of US$ 63 billion, against sales to the US market of US$ 29 billion. Four years later, the difference in the role between Americans and Chinese in the Brazilian agenda was even greater. Until November 2022, Brazil exported US$ 83 billion to China, against US$ 33 billion to the USA.
The increase in exports was driven mainly by the growth of agriculture and the extractive industry. With regard to imports, the data also show that pragmatism and commercial reality were not affected by a government with ideological parameters. In 2019, China and the US competed for space as the largest supplier of goods to Brazil. Beijing, at that time, had exported US$ 36 billion to the country, against US$ 34 billion for the United States. Four years later, the jump is significant in the Chinese presence.
By November 2022, China had exported US$56 billion in goods to Brazil, against US$47 billion of US imports. In fact, in 2022 alone, imports of Chinese goods to Brazil increased significantly, with a 30% jump compared to 2021 data.
The data is impressive:
Between 2020 and 2022, the trade relationship between China and Brazil broke successive records
In 2021, 20% of all food imported by China came from Brazil.
In 2020, Brazil's trade surplus with China represented 65% of Brazil's entire surplus with the world.
Between 2011 and 2021, Brazil's trade surplus with China reached US$ 200 billion.
There are several reasons for this commercial boom. Some of them can be explained by:
Trade war between China and the US, opening up space for the export of agricultural goods from Brazil to the Chinese market.
The growth of China's economy at the height of the pandemic.
The structural relationship of interdependence between the two countries.
And the investments? In 2021, Chinese companies invested US$ 5.9 billion in Brazil, an amount 208% higher than in 2020 and the highest since 2017. What the numbers show, once again, debunk Bolsonaro's anti-China rhetoric:
The growth of Chinese investments in Brazil was much higher than the 23% increase in total foreign investments in the country in 2021 registered by the Central Bank of Brazil.
The advance of Chinese investments in Brazil was much higher than the expansion of 3.6% of Chinese investments in the world in 2021, to US$ 113.6 billion, according to the Ministry of Commerce of China (MOFCOM).
The China Global Investment Tracker estimates that Brazil was the country that received the most Chinese investments in the world in 2021, with a share of 13.6% of the total.
On the other hand of the expansion registered in Brazil, Chinese investments in the United States and Australia fell by 27% and 70%, respectively. In the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the drop was 41%.
And the future? The sophistication of food consumption by China, which will mean greater diversification on the part of Asians in their purchases of Brazilian products. Instead of buying products in bulk, today there is an increasing trend towards ready-to-eat foods. Therefore, with greater added value. In the transition team in Brazil and among members of the government of President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , China will play an important role in reformulating the country's foreign policy and will be one of Lula's first international travel destinations.
The hope of the new government is to once again strengthen the relationship with the Brics. But without this approximation meaning a new automatic alignment or a relationship of subservience to the country that represents the largest destination for national exports.
Source:
https://noticias.uol.com.br/colunas...il-e-china-atinge-auge-e-ignora-promessas.htm