Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said this Thursday that the country is “back” on the international stage, embarking on a trip to China to talk about the Ukraine conflict and investment.
Lula, who landed in Shanghai on Wednesday evening, will meet with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday to try to form a group of countries to mediate in the war that is ravaging Ukraine.
“The time when Brazil was absent from major world decisions is in the past. We are back on the international stage after an inexplicable absence,” he declared during what is his first official event in the country.
Lula was present in Shanghai on Thursday at the inauguration ceremony of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) as president of the New Development Bank (NDV) of the BRICS, the group of major countries representing Brazil, China, India, Russia and the South. -Africa.
Since his return to power on January 1, the left-wing president has wanted to bring Brazil back “into the new geopolitical world” and leave behind the isolationism of his predecessor, far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula, who traveled to Argentina and Uruguay in January and the United States the following month, was initially scheduled to visit China, Brazil’s main trading partner since 2009, between March 25 and March 31, but the trip was postponed due to pneumonia.
The Brazilian president, 77, arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday accompanied by the first lady, Rosângela “Janja” da Silva, and was received at the airport by China’s vice foreign minister, Xie Feng.
“Brazil is back with a willingness to once again contribute to a more developed, fairer and environmentally sustainable world,” he said at the ceremony at the BRICS bank, after also praising the BRICS bank’s role as a ” instrument to address inequality between rich and emerging countries”, with “great transformative potential” as it frees emerging countries from what it denounced as enslavement to traditional financial institutions.
“For the first time, a development bank with global reach is being established without the participation of developed countries in its early stages, thus free from the chains of conditions that traditional institutions impose on emerging economies,” he said.
The Brazilian head of state, who accused the dominant financial institutions of “pretending to rule” emerging countries, “without having a mandate to do so”, also stressed the importance of the New Development Bank in financing projects in the respective local currencies of the countries. members.
China has been trying to internationalize its currency, the yuan, since 2009, with the aim of reducing reliance on the dollar in trade and investment deals and challenging the role of the US currency as the world’s main reserve currency. This issue has become more pressing now that the protracted trade and technology war between Beijing and Washington has led to the imposition of sanctions against several Chinese entities and after the exclusion of Russia from the international financial system in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
According to recent data from the British newspaper Financial Times, the dollar is used in 84.3% of trade worldwide. But the yuan’s share has more than doubled since the invasion of Ukraine, from less than 2% to 4.5%, due to the greater use of the Chinese currency in trade with Russia.
Lula assured that the New Development Bank is a “tool to reduce inequalities” between rich and emerging countries, which “translate into social exclusion, hunger, extreme poverty and forced migrations”.
“We don’t want to be better than anyone else: we want opportunities to expand our potential and ensure the dignity, citizenship and quality of life of our people,” he stressed.
The Brazilian head of state recalled that the “unmet financing needs of developing countries have been and remain enormous”, at a time when the poorest countries are facing a sovereign debt crisis, exacerbated by the rise in interest rates in the United States and the United States. Europe, making financing costs more expensive.
“The lack of effective reform of traditional financial institutions limits the volume and credit modalities of existing banks,” notes Lula. “The New Development Bank meets all the conditions to become the major bank of the Global South”.
The emerging economies bloc BRICS first met in 2009 – at the time without South Africa – after the global financial crisis, and quickly established an agenda focused on reforming the international order, aiming for greater prominence of emerging countries in organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
As a whole, the BRICS represent about 40% of the world’s population and 24% of the gross world product.
The agreement for the creation of the New Development Bank was signed during the BRICS Summit held in the city of Fortaleza in 2014. The bank started operations the following year.
The multilateral bank has already approved 70 infrastructure and sustainable development projects worth more than $25 billion (22.75 billion euros), including in clean energy, public health, education, water, sanitation or transportation, according to data. released by the institution.
Lula’s delegation to China consists of seven ministers, 19 deputies and five governors.
This Thursday, the Brazilian president will pay a 30-minute visit to the Shanghai facilities of Chinese telecommunications group Huawei, a leader in fifth-generation (5G) networks.
Afterwards, the Brazilian president will return to the hotel where he will stay, located on the “Bund”, the famous neoclassical waterfront in Shanghai.
At the hotel, Lula da Silva will meet with the executive directors of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD and the China Communications Construction Company group, the Chinese shareholder of Mota-Engil.
At the end of the afternoon, the Brazilian leader will meet and dine with Chinese Communist Party leader Chen Jining in Shanghai.
After dinner, Lula will leave for Beijing, where he will meet Friday morning with the executive director of State Grid, the Chinese state-owned company that owns 25% of REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionais) in Portugal and is also one of the largest companies in Brazil’s electricity sector. is. The company operates the two power lines that connect the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant in Pará to the southeastern part of the Latin American country.
In the late morning, Lula da Silva will meet in China with Zhao Leji, the chairman of the National People’s Assembly, the highest legislative body in the Asian country.
Then the head of state of Brazil will participate in the ceremony of handing over flower baskets at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square.
In the afternoon Lula has a meeting with the Chinese Premier, Li Qiang.
The meeting with Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is scheduled for 4:45 pm (9:45 am in Lisbon).
Source: DN
