Brazil will not sell more state-owned companies, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Chinese state television network CCTV. The PT member was in Beijing this Friday (14th), and met with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, for the signing of bilateral agreements.
“We don’t want to be a seller not only of commodities or a seller of a state-owned company,” said Lula, according to a transcript of the conversation released by the Brazilian government. “What Brazil wants to propose to China is that we need to build a hundred new things. That goes through highways, railroads, ports, airports, that goes through new industries, that goes through chemical companies, that goes through new investments.” This is what Lula has been calling the “reindustrialization” of Brazil.
Lula defended in the conversation with the Chinese press, as he had already said on other occasions during his trip to the Asian country, that it is necessary to advance in Brazil’s relationship with China, not only in economic and trade matters, but in topics such as science and technology, agreements between universities and energy transition. “We need to establish a policy in which China becomes an investment partner in Brazil.”
In the conversation, the PT also defended commercial transactions between countries without going through the dollar, the search for a solution to the war in Ukraine and the creation of a new form of world governance, in which countries like China, Brazil and Mexico have more voice.
With regard to reforms in multilateral organizations, which Lula had already defended on the trip during his speech at the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff at the New Development Bank, the petista said that it is necessary to give more representation to the United Nations Security Council. “I think it has to have countries in South America, Latin America, countries in Africa. It is not possible that the African continent, with fifty-four countries, cannot have a representative.”
“If you don’t have a UN Security Council with decision-making authority and the signatory countries comply, we won’t solve the world’s climate problem,” Lula said on Chinese TV.
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“The only thing I want is the following: it is necessary to create a new form of world governance”, said Lula. “China has to be taken into account. Brazil has to be taken into account. A country like Nigeria, like Egypt, like Mexico, has to be taken into account. India has to be taken into account.” As these countries grow and develop, “obviously they begin to frighten those who felt they owned the world”, commented the president.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, the Brazilian president said he was “obsessed” with talking to people around the world to find a way to achieve peace. He defended that countries stop supplying weapons for the conflict and that they seek a peaceful solution.
**With information from Altamiro Silva Junior from Estadão Content