|
 |
|
| Implications of China’s entrance in Brazil
|
|
|
Deindustrialization and a superpower of poor people? Join Rafael Gonçalves de Lima
Since 2002, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power and indicated Ambassador Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim for the department of Foreign Relations of Brazil, Brazilian foreign policy has been used successfully as a strong tool for international projection and as a mechanism for attracting external resources to the country. In paragraph 19th of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) Government’s Program 2002/2006, it had already been established that Brazil would diversify its economic, cultural and political relations by getting nearer to countries of regional importance such as South Africa, Russia, India and China. From that moment on, Brazil and China have undergone a vigorous approximation in their relations until the Chinese emerging power came to supplant in 2009, or that is to say, after almost 80 years, the United States of America’s position as Brazil’s largest trading partner.
It is also from 2009 onwards that the Chinese presence in Brazilian territory made itself heavier and more interesting. The debate on this presence is restricted either to groups that have links with the government or research groups in a few public and private universities. The predominant visions concerning the relations between China and Brazil converge to confirm the government’s prerogatives for greater alignment of Brazil with China, which of itself is not something bad. What is intended to be shown here is that, contrary to the prevailing vision, deeper relations between Brazil and China, taking them the way they have been set, have been imposing both limits and conditional terms on Brazil’s national development, bringing as its main consequences the denationalization of Brazil´s industrial park and a specialization of Brazilian production towards primary goods, not to mention a high likelihood of Brazilian deindustrialization within a 10-year deadline.
Agreements were announced in April and May of 2010 alone, for the purchase of the iron mines from the Salinas project; of Votorantim New Business, by Honbridge Holdings Chinese investments company; a total or partial acquisition by the Chinese state-owned group State Grid of seven companies which have connections with electricity distribution in Brazil and the announcement by the Chongqing Grain Group concerning the acquisition of a hundred thousand hectares of land in western Bahia, with the purpose of producing soya for both the Chinese and Brazilian markets. Added to these, should be the results which were divulged in Beijing by the Chinese General Administration of Customs showing that, just in April, China imported 4.2 tons of soya from Brazil, or that is to say, 5% more than it did in March. The same department advised that Chinese imports of Brazilian soya improved 9.9% in the first four months of the year, if we are to compare them with the same period in the previous year. The amount of foreign currency involved in the purchasing of both land and Brazilian companies, including the future investments that will be made, exceeds US$ 6 billion. All this, without pointing out the talks involving the Brazilian businessman Eike Batista and the Chinese state-owned Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation to build a US$ 4.7 billion steelwork at the Açu port, in Rio de Janeiro.
The examples above show how the relations between China and Brazil are. It is important to point out that all of them are linked within the Brazilian media according to a certain pitch that sounds like “we are doing good business while we lessen our dependence on the United States”. What is hidden in the bulge of those relations is that, actually, there is a retreat in the struggle for industrial, economic and social development in Brazil. The internal decision making process, which involves foreign policy as well, has brought Brazil back to the 1930’s international division of labor, or that is to say, the country could be again a primary goods exporter, based on natural resources and workforce and a country which imports technology and capital intensive finished goods.
Unfortunately, the economic policies taken by Brazil are conceived along the lines of development anchored in consumption patterns, to the detriment of policies for social inclusion. It means that the building of a national project as a common ideal is not on the agenda of Brazilian policy. This process, which is already under way, will weaken the balance of payments of Brazil, since it puts the country in a very serious situation of external vulnerability and fragility, and under a structural threat, as the government no longer has the capacity to control its own exchange and fiscal policies. In short, the sort of business we have done with China, which is inside of a bigger project, is exclusionary, since it will raise both unemployment and informality in the labor market. The increase in informality will be one of the variants responsible for the corrosion in the financial base of the state that, in turn, will lessen the autonomy of any social policies that could be designed by the next governments.
If the possibility of Brazil becoming the world’s fifth largest economy in the next decades is true – and I have no doubts about that – it is also true that this astounding conquest (if done the way it’s been done today) will be at the cost of millions of Brazilians who are going to be crushed by a political and economic gearbox the logic of which they do not even know. Brazil is on its way to becoming a superpower. A superpower of poor people!
At this point, it is important to bring out that China is not the great villain of the story, quite the opposite; it may be one of Brazil’s greatest allies for a national project that seeks not only economic growth, but also development. For that, it is necessary that the other contracts made with China should follow the Chinese standard itself, or that is to say, setting up clauses for forming joint ventures and transferring technology. The contracts Brazil has currently made with China do nothing other than to plunder the national private and public wealth and impose serious limitations and barriers over our national interests. Moreover, it does not happen because China imposes anything on us; it happens because Brazil agrees with everything without discussing issues nor stopping to lucidly think out what sort of partnership is being established.
China possesses long-term goals and it goes by way of the formation of a national identity and the preparation of a project that is to lend form to those objectives: a national plan. China has transformed its reality due to the fact it knows which characteristics within its society it wishes to alter and most important of all, it knows to where it wants to get. It is not up to us to discuss here which of the political options was chosen by China to carry this project forward. It is a duty and a right that belongs to the Chinese people.
Brazil, in contrast to China – and to quote one of the greatest thinkers over the building of the Brazilian people, Darcy Ribeiro – has not found itself and still struggles to make itself into a human type that has never existed before. As Darcy Ribeiro himself said, Brazil is a new Rome. A late and tropical Rome. Due to its population size, it is the largest Latin nation and it starts to be so because of its artistic and cultural creativity. What the country needs this very year – a year of presidential elections – is to understand that it needs to be a great nation in the mastery of science and technology in order to make itself into an economic power of self-sustained progress.
With this new impulse, I believe we should take on this task that befits us, as Brazilians. It is evident that this task necessarily involves China. Behind everything we do, there is politics and in all analyses, there is a political bias. Mine is patriotic and aims to help Brazil to position itself positively into this new version of the world that has been put forward by current international relations. May we see delegations of the next Brazilian president pointed towards other countries composed more of industrialists than of big land estate owners, mainly those from the sugar cane plantations.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
Graduating in International Relations and Economics at FACAMP, focuses his research on the relations among China and the African countries members of the CPLC (Community of Portuguese Language Countries). |
|
|
