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Brazil and China in times of the coronavirus pandemic
Fri, February 18, 11:30am to 1:00pm, Virtual Building, VR106Abstract
At the beginning of the 21st century, China has become Brazil's main economic partner. Between 2007 and 2020, Chinese companies made 176 business projects in Brazil, with investments totaling US$ 66.1 billion. Until 2020, Brazil will receive 47% of Chinese investments in South America. In a little more than ten years, Chinese companies have invested in all regions of Brazil. There are confirmed Chinese projects in 23 of the 27 federative units of the country. The state of São Paulo leads with 31% of the number of confirmed projects between 2007 and 2020, followed by Minas Gerais (8%), Bahia (7.1%), Rio de Janeiro (6.7%), Goiás (5.4%), and Pará (4.6%). Beginning in 2020, Brazil-China relations gained great visibility in the Brazilian media and public spaces of debate during the coronavirus pandemic. Although China developed the first vaccine used in Brazil against the coronavirus (Coronavac), the negationist attitudes of President Bolsonaro and several members of his government created various conflicts and tensions that had repercussions in the Brazilian press and in the diplomatic sphere of Sino-Brazilian relations. To what extent do such conflicts affect or not the relations between the countries that represent the major economic powers in Latin America and Asia? To what extent are Sino-Brazilian relations threatened? The objective of this paper is to investigate in which ways and to what extent Brazil and China have come closer or further apart during the covid pandemic crisis.