Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday they had raised the status of their countries' global strategic partnership during a state visit on a regional tour showing Beijing's growing diplomatic clout.
Xi and Lula said the China-Brazil relationship had become a "Community with a Shared Future for a More Just World and Sustainable Planet" — expanding a key slogan from the Chinese president — in a news conference at the presidential residence.
They also agreed to find "synergies" between the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and Brazilian development programs, after Lula had declined to formally enroll Brazil in China's global infrastructure initiative.
The leaders signed nearly 40 cooperation agreements to strengthen ties between the two economies with more than $150 billion of bilateral trade, Lula said.
"This is another historic moment in the development of China-Brazil relations," said Xi, adding that China was ready to make them "golden partners."
Xi uses the term "Community with a Shared Future" to formalize what Beijing sees as a positive and wide-ranging bilateral relationship with a country sharing geopolitical and economic interests.
China has used the slogan in the past year to describe ties with countries such as Vietnam and Serbia.
The state visit in Brasilia came after twin summits for Xi in one week: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima and the Group of 20 major economies in Rio de Janeiro.
While Xi played a central role at both summits, U.S. President Joe Biden arrived as a lame duck with just two months left in the White House and little room for lasting pledges, as his successor Donald Trump vows a total foreign policy overhaul.
A group portrait on the first day of the G20 summit captured the moment, with Xi front and center, next to the presidents of Brazil, India and South Africa — China's partners in the BRICS group of major developing nations and the three consecutive G20 hosts from 2023 to 2025.
Biden missed that photo op for "logistical reasons," the White House said.
With Biden diminished and Trump averse to multilateral forums, diplomats and foreign policy experts said Xi's charm offensive was filling a vacuum in an unsettled global order.
China's side meetings with Western powers amid trade and geopolitical tensions, from the United States and Britain to France and Germany, showed a conciliatory turn from Beijing ahead of four more rocky years facing down Trump, said Li Xing, a professor at the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies.
"China's strategy is clear; the posture it is displaying is to let go of past resentment," said Li. "This is definitely an adjustment, and it's all because this year's G20 summit is in a transition period following the U.S. election."
Behind the scenes, several diplomats who had been part of previous G20 summits noticed an evolving posture from the Chinese — less focused on their own narrow interests and more proactive about forging a wider consensus.
"China is much more participative and much more constructive," said one Brazilian diplomat, requesting anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
A European diplomat noted that Chinese peers helped to build consensus this year on several fronts, including topics such as women's rights in which they had not been traditionally active. It looked like a conscious move to occupy a multilateral forum that Trump is likely to neglect, the diplomat added.
"A place left unoccupied will be occupied by another," said the European diplomat. "Apparently China is interested in occupying more than it has to date."
