Brazilian president wraps up China visit by telling US to ‘stop encouraging’ war in Ukraine

[Nan Yang]

Brazilian president wraps up China visit by telling US to ‘stop encouraging’ war in Ukraine​

• Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva issued the challenge a day after a meeting with Xi Jinping, where they urged more countries to play a constructive role
• While Lula also said the US and EU need to start talking about peace, he told China’s state broadcaster that he still wanted better relations with Washington

Sylvie Zhuang in Beijingand Agence France-Presse
Published: 9:50pm, 15 Apr, 2023

The Brazilian and Chinese leaders pictured ahead of their meeting on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva concluded his visit to China on Saturday by urging the United States to stop “encouraging” war in Ukraine.
“The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace. The European Union needs to start talking about peace,” Lula told reporters in Beijing.

In that way, the international community will be able to “convince” Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky that “peace is in the interest of the whole world”, he said.

A joint statement by China and Brazil on Friday called on more countries to play a constructive role in promoting a political resolution to the Ukraine crisis, and said both countries will maintain communication on this issue.

Lula’s four-day visit also included a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday and saw the signing of 15 deals covering areas such as satellite technology, the digital economy, renewable energy, the automotive industry and agribusiness.

One of the deals will see the two countries working together on the next phase of the Earth Resources Satellite Programme (CBERS) – a partnership dating back to the 1980s – which Brazil’s science minister Luciana Santos would help monitor the Amazon even in cloudy weather.
One Chinese analyst said economic cooperation between the two countries could help China better respond to the risk of decoupling with the US and other Western countries.

Wang Yong, an international relations professor at Peking University, said their “way of building a new cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship” was sending a signal to the world’s other emerging economies.

“This is sending a clear message of their hope to form a new international economic, political and security order,” Wang said.

The visit also spurred on efforts by both sides to challenge the international dominance of the US dollar.

Less than two weeks before Lula visited, China and Brazil unveiled an agreement to trade using their own currencies rather than the dollar as intermediary.

During a visit to the New Development Bank in Shanghai – an institution established by the BRICS countries in 2014 – Lula said the members of the bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) should work towards replacing the dollar

“Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar. Why can’t we do trade based on our own currencies?” Lula said.

However, Lula also told the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV that while Brazil wanted stronger ties with Beijing he was still keen to improve relations with the US.

“We need to strengthen our relationship with China, but that doesn’t mean severing our ties with the United States. I also want to strengthen our ties with the US,” he said.

Lula brought a large delegation with him that included 240 business representatives, 90 of them from the agricultural sector.

China overtook the US as Brazil’s top trading partner in 2009 and is a major market for the country’s soybeans, sugar, beef, iron ore and crude oil. Brazil is also the biggest recipient of Chinese investment in Latin America, according to Chinese state media.

“We must gather countries that pursue peace, those countries that love peace.”