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    "original_url": "https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2026\/09\/28\/brazil-election-president-lula-bolsonaro-china-america\/?utm_source=cnn_Global+Briefing&utm_medium=email",
    "parsed_content": "Analysis\n Brazil Has No Answers for Its China Problem\nThe country\u2019s troubling relationship to China is at the center of its presidential campaign.\n \n \n \n By Felipe Krause, a lecturer and the head of the Brazilian studies program at the University of Oxford, and Henry Large, a doctoral candidate at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. \n \n \n \n \n \n Four military personnel in dark dress uniforms and white gloves stand in a line outdoors, each holding a flag pole displaying alternating flags of China and Brazil.\n \n Members of the People\u2019s Liberation Army Honor Guard hold Chinese and Brazilian flags before a welcome ceremony for Brazilian President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva in Beijing on May 13, 2025. Getty Images\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Get audio access with any FP subscription.\n \n \n \n ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN\n \n \n \nSeptember 28, 2026, 10:25 AM\nBrazil\u2019s October presidential election offers sharply different visions of the country\u2019s place in the world. Incumbent President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva sees China as a partner in development and a counterweight to Western power. His principal challenger is Sen. Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro, the son of Lula\u2019s right-wing predecessor, who promises closer alignment with Washington.\nYet either outcome is likely to leave Brazil\u2019s economic reliance on Beijing largely intact. Neither candidate offers a convincing strategy for managing the risks that dependence increasingly carries. Those risks have grown as China\u2019s global engagement has become more powerful and assertive, its presence in Brazil has expanded from commodity purchases into strategically sensitive industries, and its rivalry with Washington has intensified.\nBrazil\u2019s October presidential election offers sharply different visions of the country\u2019s place in the world. Incumbent President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva sees China as a partner in development and a counterweight to Western power. His principal challenger is Sen. Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro, the son of Lula\u2019s right-wing predecessor, who promises closer alignment with Washington.\nYet either outcome is likely to leave Brazil\u2019s economic reliance on Beijing largely intact. Neither candidate offers a convincing strategy for managing the risks that dependence increasingly carries. Those risks have grown as China\u2019s global engagement has become more powerful and assertive, its presence in Brazil has expanded from commodity purchases into strategically sensitive industries, and its rivalry with Washington has intensified.\nBrazil needs a China strategy adapted to all three changes. The election debate remains organized around competing preferences for Beijing and Washington, with too little attention to the economic and diplomatic capabilities Bras\u00edlia needs to preserve its freedom of action.\nLula\u2019s approach has a coherent political logic. His electoral program prioritizes closer relations with the BRICS grouping and the global south, while he advocates greater use of national currencies in international transactions. China offers markets, investment, and technology, alongside support for a more influential Brazilian role in global governance. In this conception, cooperation with Beijing advances economic development and loosens the constraints of an international system shaped by Western power.\nThe practical agenda reflects that ambition. Lula\u2019s May 2025 visit to Beijing produced 20 agreements, including cooperation on artificial intelligence. His government also seeks U.S. technology: In August, it announced separate supercomputing projects, one involving Huawei and iFlytek, another expected to attract Nvidia. Lula\u2019s objective is to draw resources from several partners while retaining discretion over Brazil\u2019s choices. China occupies an especially privileged position because its economic contribution reinforces his diplomatic ambitions.\nThat approach also encourages a forgiving interpretation of Beijing\u2019s geopolitical conduct. Lula\u2019s chief foreign-policy advisor, Celso Amorim, has presented China and BRICS as defenders of the global order amid the U.S. retreat from multilateralism. He made these comments after the grouping had expanded to include more illiberal states, with Russian President Vladimir Putin hosting its annual summit two years into Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.\nTreating China as a corrective to U.S. power leaves insufficient room to consider how Chinese power itself might constrain Brazil. An additional Lula term would likely deepen the partnership through the same assumptions that have guided its expansion. Maintaining the status quo now means granting Beijing leeway as it threatens democracy across the Taiwan Strait and challenges regional sovereignty in the South China Sea.\nBolsonaro begins from a different reading of Brazil\u2019s interests. He has condemned the country\u2019s \u201csubmission to China,\u201d considered leaving BRICS, and proposed a closer strategic relationship with the United States. In May, he met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House behind closed doors. His proposals include preferential cooperation with Washington on critical minerals, joining Trump\u2019s \u201cShield of the Americas\u201d counternarcotics alliance, and a bilateral free trade agreement. The underlying wager is that political affinity with the United States would unlock investment, technology, and diplomatic support, giving Brazil an alternative to Lula\u2019s emphasis on the global south.\nHis formal program is more cautious than his rhetoric. His 76-page government plan, released last month, promises pragmatic negotiations with China, stating, \u201cWhat guides our diplomacy is the interest of the Brazilian producer and worker, not sympathy or antipathy toward this or that government.\u201d His camp has called for preserving economic opportunities while reducing dependence and scrutinizing Chinese involvement in sensitive sectors. These qualifications reflect an unavoidable constraint: A president seeking closer relations with Washington would still have to protect the revenues and investments generated by China. Announcing a diplomatic realignment is considerably easier than building alternative markets and supply chains.\nHis father\u2019s presidency supplies a useful test. Jair Bolsonaro campaigned against Chinese influence in 2018, but by October 2019, he was in Beijing, inviting Chinese participation in Brazil\u2019s offshore oil auction. Trade continued to expand despite diplomatic friction. Research on his presidency finds that changes in Brazil\u2019s foreign-policy stance coexisted with the resilience of the broader relationship. Established commercial ties and growing asymmetry between the two countries limited the effects of ideological hostility.\nThose constraints have become more substantial. China bought $100 billion in Brazilian goods in 2025, nearly 29 percent of total exports. Producers and the governments that depend on their earnings have powerful reasons to resist disruption. Chinese investment in infrastructure and technology creates further interests in continuity. Washington would have difficulty replacing that demand, particularly in agricultural markets where U.S. producers compete with Brazilian exporters.\nFor Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro, the constraint reaches into his own political constituency. Agribusiness, an important source of support for the Brazilian right, depends heavily on Chinese buyers. Under his father, its lobbying helped contain diplomatic damage. Confrontation with Beijing could therefore impose immediate costs on supporters he must accommodate. Lula faces a different coalition but similar demands for growth and investment. Both would inherit commercial arrangements accumulated over decades, with few readily available substitutes.\nThe candidates\u2019 contrasting proposals therefore offer limited prospects for changing the foundations of Brazil\u2019s relationship with China. Lula\u2019s pursuit of closer political coordination with Beijing and Bolsonaro\u2019s preference for Washington could produce differences in diplomatic tone and emphasis while leaving Brazil\u2019s underlying dependence largely intact. Both approaches leave unresolved the harder task of developing a strategy that preserves the benefits of cooperation with China, strengthens Brazil\u2019s freedom of action, and defends the international rules that protect its sovereignty.\nThat task has become urgent because the geopolitical environment has changed. China\u2019s commercial ascent in the 2000s gave Brazil opportunities to diversify beyond its traditional partners. Beijing now has greater capacity to impose its preferences, illustrated by its December 2025 military exercises rehearsing a blockade of Taiwan\u2019s major ports. Its competition with Washington increasingly reaches into Brazil\u2019s development choices, including infrastructure ownership, technological standards, and export market access. Basing China policy on outdated assumptions leaves Brazil exposed to three growing risks that will outlive political cycles.\nThe first is economic overdependence. In 2025, China purchased 79 percent of Brazil\u2019s soybean exports, 67 percent of its iron ore exports, and 45 percent of its petroleum exports. A Chinese slowdown, changes in demand, or conflict in East Asia could transmit losses through export earnings, investment, and public revenue. Geographic distance would provide limited protection.\nDependence also creates opportunities for coercion. Australia experienced that danger when deteriorating relations with Beijing brought restrictions on its exports, including wine tariffs exceeding 200 percent. China\u2019s own need for Brazilian commodities would complicate similar action against Brazil, but particular industries could become targets. Diversifying markets before a crisis emerges would provide insurance against both economic shocks and political pressure.\nThe second problem is growing pressure from Washington. Telecommunications already demonstrates its bipartisan foundations: The Trump administration warned Brazil over Huawei\u2019s participation in 5G, and Jake Sullivan, national security advisor to former President Joe Biden, raised similar concerns. The strategic competition will likely outlast Trump.\nCritical minerals are extending its reach. In February, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. agreed to $565 million in financing for Brazilian rare-earth producer Serra Verde, including an option for Washington to acquire a minority stake. U.S. efforts to build alternatives to Chinese supply chains will increasingly influence Brazil\u2019s choices of investors and technology partners. Lula pursuing cooperation with both powers and Bolsonaro promising privileged access to Washington will each face demands that complicate continued business with Beijing.\nThe third problem concerns Brazil\u2019s geopolitical interests. As a middle power, Brazil benefits from rules that constrain stronger states and protect weaker ones. Strategic equidistance can become an empty and risky objective, accommodating Chinese and Russian challenges to those rules. Measuring autonomy primarily by distance from Washington obscures the costs of that accommodation. A Fl\u00e1vio Bolsonaro administration could face the corresponding temptation to excuse U.S. coercion in return for political support. Selective defense of sovereignty weakens the principles on which Brazil relies.\nUkraine exposes the tension. Brazil supported a U.N. resolution demanding Russia\u2019s withdrawal in February 2023. Its joint peace initiative with China in May 2024 omitted that demand, risking acceptance of conquest for settlement. The principle also applies to China\u2019s violations of Philippine maritime rights and Trump\u2019s tariffs to pressure Brazil over Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s prosecution. Consistency requires defending international restraints regardless of which power violates them.\nBrazil needs to preserve the benefits of relations with China while reducing excessive dependence and defending the rules that protect its sovereignty. That requires broader export markets, stronger domestic capabilities, and greater cooperation with other middle powers. Negotiations should widen commercial opportunities, while clear criteria for sensitive investments should help Brazil judge competing offers against its own development and security priorities. These efforts require sustained work beyond the election cycle.\nWhoever wins in October will inherit the challenge of turning Brazil\u2019s considerable resources into durable freedom of action. The candidates\u2019 competing diplomatic preferences offer an incomplete answer to that common task.\nFelipe Krause is a lecturer and the head of the Brazilian studies program at the University of Oxford.\nHenry Large is a doctoral candidate at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies.\n Read More On\n \n Brazil |\n Elections |\n South America |\n U.S.-China Competition",
    "published_at": "2026-10-14T00:00:00+00:00",
    "author_name": "Felipe Krause, Henry Large",
    "site_name": "Foreign Policy",
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    "ai_headline": "Brazil Has No Answers for Its China Problem",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Brazil Presidential Candidates Lack China Strategy",
    "ai_excerpt": "Brazil's upcoming presidential election highlights differing views on China, but neither candidate offers a convincing strategy for managing the risks of economic reliance on Beijing. The country faces growing economic overdependence, pressure from Washington, and challenges to its geopolitical interests.",
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