Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, formalized 37 cooperation agreements in areas such as agribusiness, technology and investments and highlighted the bilateral partnership, in a meeting held today in Brasília.
The announced partnerships also involve areas of infrastructure, industry, energy, mining, finance, communications, sustainable development, tourism, sport, health and culture.
In a statement to the press after the meeting, Lula da Silva stressed that Xi Jinping's state visit to Brazil reinforced the ambition of increasing China's bilateral relationship with Brazil, countries that in 2024 will celebrate 50 years of establishing diplomatic relations.
"We are determined to base our cooperation for the next 50 years in areas such as sustainable infrastructure, energy transition, artificial intelligence, digital economy, health and aerospace," said Lula da Silva.
"For this reason, we will establish synergies between Brazilian development strategies, such as the New Industry Brazil (NIB), the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), the South American Integration Routes Program, and the Ecological Transformation Plan, and the Belt and Road Initiative", he added.
The Brazilian President announced the creation of a working group on Financial Cooperation and another on Productive and Sustainable Development, which, once formed, must present priority projects within two months.
At the regional level, the two countries intend to work together to continue the dialogue between Mercosur (a bloc founded by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) with China and discuss deepening cooperation in the area of investment.
The Chinese leader stressed that in the conversation with Lula da Silva they looked back at the development of the China-Brazil relationship over the last 50 years and that both agreed that "this relationship is at the best moment in history, it has a global, strategic and long-term increasingly highlighted".
Xi Jinping declared that the two countries have reached new strategic consensus on the future development of relations and cited, among the most important points, the elevation of bilateral relations and "the establishment of synergies between the One Belt, One Road initiative and the strategies of Brazil's development in the context of the accelerated evolution of the international configuration".
"We agree to constantly deepen mutual strategic trust and continue firm mutual support on vital issues such as sovereignty, security and development interests for our countries," said the Chinese President.
"We will deepen cooperation in priority areas such as economy and trade, finance, science and technology, infrastructure and environmental production, and strengthen cooperation in emerging areas such as energy transition, digital economy, artificial intelligence and green mining," he added.
Lula da Silva and Xi Jinping mentioned the desire for Brazil and China to continue strengthening collaboration in multilateral forums such as the United Nations, G20 (of the 20 largest economies in the world), and BRICS, a group of emerging countries founded by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
China is currently Brazil's largest trading partner. According to data from the Brazilian Government, in 2023, bilateral trade reached a historic record of 157 billion dollars (148.2 billion euros) and the trade surplus with China was responsible for more than half of Brazil's global trade balance.
Between January and October, the trade balance reached 136 billion dollars (128.3 billion euros), with 53 billion dollars (50 billion euros) from imports made by China from the South American country and 83 billion dollars (78.3 billion euros) in Brazilian exports to the Asian country.
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