Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Friday that China’s development will “open up new opportunities” for Brazil and the world during a meeting of the two leaders in Beijing.
China will pursue high-quality development, accelerate the creation of a new development paradigm, and promote high-level opening up. This will open up new opportunities for Brazil and countries around the world,” said a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Lula traveled to China to boost economic ties with Brazil’s main trading partner and ratify that his country “is back” on the international scene and with the intention of becoming a mediator in the conflict in Ukraine.
Lula was received by President Xi on Friday in a ceremony before the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The Brazilian president earlier attended a ceremony at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square and met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang before his meeting with Xi.
In Shanghai, Lula questioned the use of the dollar as a global currency just weeks after his government agreed to trade with China using its own currencies.
«Why are all countries obliged to do their trade tied to the dollar? Today a country needs to run after the dollar when it could export in its own currency », he said.
Lula also criticized the IMF in reference to accusations that it imposes harsh budget cuts on debt-strapped countries like Argentina in exchange for bailout lines.
“No bank can be suffocating the economies of countries as the IMF is doing now in Argentina or as they did with Brazil for so long and with all the third world countries,” he said.
“The time when Brazil was absent from major world decisions is now a thing of the past,” he said in Shanghai, from where he left Thursday night for Beijing. “Brazil is back,” she insisted.
“We want to raise the level of strategic collaboration between our countries, expand trade flows and, together with China, balance global geopolitics,” Lula’s account tweeted along with an image with Zhao.
Neither China nor Brazil have imposed sanctions against Russia, as the Western powers have done, and they try to position themselves as mediators to achieve peace.
