Brazil’s Bolsonaro Lost Because His China Policy Muzzled the Conservatism He Promised Voters

Brazilians narrowly elected socialist former president and convicted felon Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva their president on Sunday night, prompting left-wing corporate outlets in the United States to declare the vote a stunning rebuke of conservative values.

Such a close race between two vastly different candidates, with one of the lowest abstention rates in the history of Brazilian elections, proves the outcome to be anything but – particularly in comparison to the tremendous gains conservative candidates made in the Brazilian Congress and in gubernatorial races.

Incumbent conservative Jair Bolsonaro, defying polls to make it into a second round of voting in the first place, received 49.1 percent of the vote on Sunday to Lula’s 50.9 percent – a difference of only about 2 million votes in a nation of over 200 million people. It was the closest presidential election in Brazil since 1989, when Lula finished second against later-impeached President Fernando Collor de Mello.

The biggest shocker of the Brazilian presidential race was not Bolsonaro’s loss in a vacuum, or even the fact that Lula was on the ballot at all after being convicted on multiple appeals of using bribe money while president to buy luxury property (the nation’s top court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, overturned the conviction, but never challenged the facts of the case). It was the fact that Bolsonaro was defeated amid a rising tide of conservative victories that brought nine of his former cabinet ministers into Congress.

In Sao Paulo, the country’s wealthiest state, Bolsonaro-endorsed former Infrastructure Minister Tarcísio de Freitas soundly trounced Fernando Haddad, Lula’s replacement while he was in prison during the 2018 presidential election, to become governor. In Brazil, unlike the United States, the big cities tend to vote conservative, while the poor, rural northeast is a left-wing stronghold.

Bolsonaro won Sao Paulo 55 percent to 45 percent, which did not prove enough to surpass Lula’s turnout in the northeastern states. The left-wing Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper called the Bolsonaro vote in the country’s largest city a “disappointment,” reporting that the Bolsonaro campaign expected to defeat Lula there by about 15 points. In contrast, Bolsonaro outperformed national polls, which found up to five-point differences in Lula’s favor federally.

The election could not be interpreted as a rejection of conservative values. Conservatives came out to vote, just not for Bolsonaro.

It was a rejection of Bolsonaro’s execution of his campaign promise to defend conservative values, particularly regarding taking a stand against communist regimes abroad. Nowhere is Bolsonaro’s failure to live up to his vow to “put a foot in the ass of socialism” than in his support for closer ties with communist China.

As a candidate in 2018, Bolsonaro indicated that he would curb the out-of-control Chinese spending spree in the country, buying up critical Brazilian industries, becoming the country’s top trade partner, and jeopardizing the country’s sovereignty. Notably, Lula was the president who first restructured Brazil’s foreign policy to prioritize China, making Beijing one of his first stops as president in 2004.

“China isn’t buying in Brazil. It’s buying Brazil,” Bolsonaro famously said while campaigning in 2018, spooking Chinese investors and alienating the Communist Party.

By the end of his tenure, Bolsonaro officials were openly discussing joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s global project to colonize the world’s most impoverished countries.

The tide appeared to turn during Bolsonaro’s visit to Beijing in October 2019.

“I’m in a capitalist country!” Bolsonaro cheerfully lied upon landing in China. Following talks with dictator Xi Jinping, Bolsonaro gifted the genocidal communist tyrant a soccer jersey and signed eight trade agreements expanding China’s influence in his country.

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

Bolsonaro proceeded to then spend much of his tenure contradicting his statements of belief and policy with his behavior towards China in particular. Regarding the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, for example, Bolsonaro vocally opposed experimental vaccine products for his country – until China came knocking with products that Chinese officials openly admitted did not “have very high protection rates.”

“The Brazilian people will not be anyone’s guinea pig,” Bolsonaro said in October 2020. By January 2021, he was publicly thanking the Communist Party of China for the “Coronavac” product created by Chinese firm Sinovac, whose use in countries such as Chile preceded large spikes in coronavirus cases.

“The Chinese embassy informed us this morning that the export of 5,400 liters of ingredients for the Coronavac vaccine, [which was] already approved, is already on the way to [Brazil] [and] will arrive in the next few days,” Bolsonaro announced that month. “I appreciate the sensibility of the Chinese government.”

In an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in June, Bolsonaro objected to legal immunity enjoyed by Pfizer and other international companies, but notably omitted discussing Sinovac. When asked where he believed the Chinese coronavirus originated, Bolsonaro failed to identify China.

“Allegedly from a laboratory on the other side of the world, but no in depth investigation has been conducted,” Bolsonaro responded. The city where the virus originated, Wuhan, is home to one of the world top virology institutes, known to have been studying bat coronaviruses at the time of the outbreak of the novel disease. In failing to mention Wuhan, however, Bolsonaro left open the possibility that he was referring to an unsubstantiated theory promoted by the government of Russia that the virus originated in a biological laboratory in Ukraine, also on the other side of the world from Brazil.

Bolsonaro had previously claimed that the pandemic may have been the product of “chemical, bacterial, and radiological warfare” in May 2021, but again emphasized, “I didn’t say the word ‘China.'”

Bolsonaro has also failed to challenge Chinese communism in other realms in which he has conspicuously taken hardline stances. Bolsonaro has been one of the few world leaders to use the United Nations General Assembly to demand action against the rise of persecution against Christians around the world, but has never once spoken against China’s imprisonment of Christians considered a threat to communism or bulldozing of churches. On religious freedom generally, Bolsonaro has claimed to be a passionate advocate, but he has remained silent on the genocide of Muslims by the Communist Party in East Turkistan. Brazil abstained from a vote on discussing – not condemning – the genocide at the U.N. this month.

China was far from a dominant topic in the Brazilian election – by the end, Bolsonaro was fielding wild allegations of pedophilia and cannibalism – but Bolsonaro’s handling of communism China as the self-proclaimed leader of the global fight against communism was reflective of how he delivered on other campaign promises, hindering enthusiasm from the right even as conservatives swept regional and congressional elections.