Bolsonaro Embraces Communist Money on Beijing Trip

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – who campaigned as a hardline anti-communist against China’s invasion of the Brazilian economy – signed eight trade agreements with dictator Xi Jinping on Friday.

Bolsonaro, in Beijing for a visit in preparation for this year’s BRICS summit in Brasilia, told reporters that “Brazil needs China, and China needs Brazil,” urging Chinese companies to invest in the South American nation.

Bolsonaro proclaimed that his country and the communist dictatorship were “completely aligned, in a way that reaches beyond our commercial and business relationship.”

The highlight of his meeting with Xi appeared to be when Bolsonaro gifted him a soccer jacket from the Rio de Janeiro team Clube de Regatas do Flamengo. Gazeta do Povo noted that Bolsonaro is a fan of another team, Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras, but described Flamengo as the “best Brazilian team today.”

China is Brazil’s largest trading partner thanks to being under socialist rule for most of the current millennium. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who pioneered the relationship between Brasilia and Beijing, is currently serving a decades-long prison sentence for laundering money and accepting kickbacks.

Bolsonaro and Xi signed eight agreements, according to Brazil’s O Globo newspaper, after an extensive communist military pageant in Tiananmen Square, home to one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of dictatorships worldwide.

Bolsonaro eased restrictions for Chinese nationals visiting Brazil and signed a deal allowing more Chinese students into the country, who have attempted to violently impose the Communist Party’s ideology in universities in Australia and other free states. As a presidential candidate, Bolsonaro campaigned on eradicating Marxist ideology from schools.

Bolsonaro also signed trade agreements involving processed beef, cottonseed meal for livestock feed, renewable energy projects, and access to Brazil’s vast natural resources.

“Brazil is a sea of opportunity for China,” Bolsonaro said. “Brazil needs China, and China needs Brazil.”

The Brazilian government has invited Chinese state-owned companies to participate in an auction for rights to offshore oil access in November, despite China’s atrocious environmental record and its history of using state-owned companies to strongarm foreign entities into silence over its human rights abuses.

Prior to Bolsonaro’s meeting with Xi Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed pleasure with his presence at formal events upon arriving Thursday.

“Since President Bolsonaro was sworn in, he has been committed to bilateral relations with China. He noted that the new Brazilian government values China as a major country, and expressed the country’s readiness to become China’s sincere friend,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. “Brazil will carry out cooperation with China in various fields instead of just in the economic and trade sector. He hopes high-level exchange will bring more win-win outcomes to both and open up new prospects in bilateral relations. It is fair to say that our relationship enjoys great potentials and a bright prospect.”

Xi also expressed satisfaction at his close relationship with Xi.

“The world is undergoing unprecedented changes, but the historic trend of peace, development and win-win collaboration is unchanged,” Chinese state media paraphrased Xi as saying. “The momentum brought by the rise of developing countries and emerging markets including China and Brazil has not changed.”

Xi predicted a “bright future” for his relationship with Bolsonaro.

No reports indicate at press time that Bolsonaro challenged the communist regime on its widespread intellectual property theft, its use of concentration camps to eliminate ethnic Muslim minorities, the use of slave labor in concentration camps to manufacture products sold worldwide, police brutality against anti-communist protesters in Hong Kong, a growing crackdown on Chinese Christians nationwide, the live harvesting of organs from political prisoners for sale on the black market, or China’s support for the rogue regime in Venezuela, which borders Brazil.

Bolsonaro also failed to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan after visiting the island nation in March 2018, much to China’s chagrin. China refuses to maintain diplomatic ties to any nation that recognizes the reality of Taiwan’s status as an independent, democratic state.

“When I passed through Taiwan, I was just a lawmaker and there was no misunderstanding in my opinion,” Bolsonaro said on Friday. “I spoke of one China and one Brazil, too.”

Bolsonaro’s acceptance of China’s illegal claims over sovereign Taiwan appear to be a response to China chastizing international leftists for criticizing Bolsonaro’s response to fires in the Amazon Rainforest this summer – later determined to be much more closely tied to policies of Bolsonaro’s socialist neighbor, Bolivian President Evo Morales.

“I want to express my appreciation for your ambassador’s words about our sovereignty in the Amazon region,” Bolsonaro said during his China visit. “For us, that public recognition is priceless.”

As a presidential candidate last year, Bolsonaro accused China of colonizing the Brazilian market and promised to prevent China from controlling the nation’s economy.

“China isn’t buying in Brazil. China is buying Brazil,” Bolsonaro said at the time. “Are you willing to leave Brazil in the hands of the Chinese?”

Bolsonaro has also repeatedly asserted that leaders in free states have an “obligation” to fight communism elsewhere. For Brazil, he said in a speech to fellow conservatives last year, this meant combatting the negative influence of the regimes of Venezuela and Cuba in particular.

“We will not leave the Cuban people,” he promised.

Of Brazil itself, Bolsonaro said during his first speech after being elected a year ago, “we could not continue to flirt with socialism, communism, populism, and the extremism of the left.”

As recently as last month at the U.N. General Assembly, Bolsonaro denounced communism for leaving “a path of death, ignorance, and stark poverty wherever it goes.” He also condemned nations that persecute their Christian population.

China has deep ties to Havana, having forgiven $6 billion in debt to the island – a gift to the regime – and brought it along for its sprawling Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese companies make millions doing business with Cuba’s colony, Venezuela, and Communist Party officials regularly advise the Maduro regime. Dictator Nicolás Maduro’s regime has described China, Russia, and Iran as the countries leading that regime’s foreign policy.

China is the world’s largest and, arguably, most repressive communist regime. It has banned the practice of any religion not directly managed by the Communist Party.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

‘Brazil Needs China’: Bolsonaro Embraces Communist Money on Beijing Trip

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