World News | China’s Xi meets Brazil’s Lula in Beijing to boost ties

BEIJING, April 14 (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping met with visiting Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Friday, in a push to boost one of the world’s two largest developing countries. part of the relationship.

The meeting came on the second day of Lula’s visit to China, Lula’s most important trading partner and a key ally in his challenge to the Western-dominated economic establishment.

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At the Great Hall of the People adjoining Tiananmen Square in the Chinese capital, Lula received a lavish military reception, including the firing of a 21-gun salute.

Their talks mainly focused on trade ties and other forms of cooperation, but also touched on the conflict in Ukraine, where the leaders agreed a negotiated solution was needed, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

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“As comprehensive strategic partners, China and Pakistan share broad common interests,” Xi said, according to China’s foreign ministry.

“China … puts the relationship at the top of its diplomatic agenda,” he said.

Leaders then oversaw the signing of agreements in areas ranging from agriculture to aviation. It underscores the improvement in relations between the two countries since Lula succeeded in January the rightwing populist Jair Bolsonaro, who has shown little interest in traveling abroad and under whose leadership he has maintained a relationship with China. relationship is often tense.

Lula’s visit included former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff being sworn in on Thursday as head of the China-backed New Development Bank, which is financing infrastructure projects in Brazil and other developing countries.

The bank has portrayed itself as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank, which often impose lending conditions that developing countries criticize as punitive. According to China’s foreign ministry, it is part of a larger cooperation framework among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and has approved 99 loan projects totaling more than $34 billion, mainly for infrastructure projects .

Rousseff, Lula’s former chief of staff, succeeded him as Brazil’s first female president. At the inauguration ceremony at the bank’s Shanghai headquarters, Lula lashed out at the IMF and the dollar’s dominance in international trade, praising Brazil and China for their agreement to use the yuan in bilateral trade.

“The NDB is a product of BRICS cooperation to create a world with less poverty, less inequality and more sustainability,” Lula said, according to a statement from the NDB.

China is Brazil’s largest export market, buying tens of billions of dollars a year in soybeans, beef, iron ore, poultry, pulp, sugar cane, cotton and crude oil. According to Chinese state media, Brazil is the largest recipient of Chinese investment in Latin America, although Lula has expressed opposition to Chinese ownership of Brazilian companies outright.

Lula’s trip to China, following visits to Argentina and Uruguay in January and the United States in February, suggests he does not take international affairs as seriously as Bolsonaro does.

A key part of Lula’s foreign propaganda has been his proposal that Brazil and other developing countries, including China, mediate peace in Ukraine. However, he angered Kiev and its closest supporters by suggesting Ukraine cede Crimea as a means of peacemaking.

China also seeks to play a role in ending the conflict, albeit in a highly pro-Moscow way. It has refused to condemn the invasion, criticized economic sanctions on Russia and accused the United States and NATO of provoking the conflict.

Russia and China declared their relationship “unrestricted” in a joint statement in 2022, and Xi Jinping reiterated their close ties during a meeting with Moscow President Vladimir Putin in March.

Also on Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said China would not sell arms to either side of the Ukraine conflict, while the Defense Ministry said Minister Li Shangfu would visit Moscow next week for talks with his Russian counterpart.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)