Newsline: China’s Diplomats Are Going on the Offensive in Brazil

May 17, 2020 at 8:50 am · Filed under Brazil, China and tagged: Brazil, China

The major Brazilian newspaper O Globo published an op-ed by Li Yang, China’s consul general in Rio de Janeiro, in response to comments made by Member of Congress Eduardo Bolsonaro, President Jair Bolsonaro’s son, in which he referred to the novel coronavirus as the “China virus.” Readers likely expected a run-of-the-mill article underlining the importance of China-Brazil ties, perhaps with a light slap on the wrist. But Li had something else in mind entirely. Attacking the Brazilian lawmaker harshly, the Chinese diplomat wondered whether Bolsonaro had been “brainwashed by the United States,” a nation that, Li pointed out, had offered a “horrible performance” in the combat against the pandemic. The author then threatened the member of Congress, writing that “should any country insist on being China’s enemy, we will be its most sophisticated enemy!” (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/15/chinas-diplomats-are-going-on-the-offensive-in-brazil/) Until very recently, it would have been unthinkable for a Chinese government envoy to publish such a broadside against an elected official in Brazil. Newspaper interviews with Chinese diplomats are traditionally formal and have generated virtually no visibility—the exact opposite of Li’s bombshell, which circulated widely. On Twitter, the Chinese Embassy in Brazil—which during the recent spats with the president’s son briefly overtook its U.S. counterpart in terms of the number of followers—now directly lashes out against anyone who dares to criticize China and, in an unmistakable swipe against President Bolsonaro, publicized a meeting in early April between Ambassador Yang Wanming and Brazil’s then-Minister of Health Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who was at the time one of the president’s most formidable political foes. (Mandetta was sacked 10 days later.) The ambassador’s decision to meet the minister of health to discuss the pandemic at a moment when Mandetta was publicly clashing with Brazil’s president on how to combat the coronavirus was widely interpreted as Beijing taking a clear stance against Bolsonaro’s denialism. To grasp how dramatic this shift in China’s diplomatic strategy is, it is worth remembering Beijing’s very different response to a previous crisis two years ago. When then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro visited Taiwan and attacked China on the campaign trail in early 2018—promising, via Twitter, to break with, as he described it, previous governments’ habit of being “friendly with communists”—the Chinese Embassy in Brasília opted for a measured response and issued a letter of protest typical for such occasions.

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