A Política Externa do Governo Bolsonaro: algumas considerações críticas sobre a relação sino-brasileira

The Foreign Policy of the Bolsonaro Government: some critical considerations about the Sino-Brazilian relationship

Resumo

China has increased its presence in Latin America, as an alternative to the core-periphery dynamic that has historically guided relations between Latin-American countries and the United States. In this sense, relations between Brazil and China have deepened and since 2009 the Asian country has been Brazil's main trading partner. However, with the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro at Palácio do Planalto in 2019, the country adopted an “anti-China” posture and alignment with the US Donald Trump administration (2017-2020). In this way, this article aims to answer the following questions: how did the relations between Brazil and China develop under the automatic alignment with Washington, D.C.? What are the contradictions between the attempts to change the guidelines of foreign policy, in view of China's role in Brazilian foreign trade? The methodological approach used is qualitative data analysis, developed through document analysis and bibliographic review. Throughout this work, it can be observed that there was a change in the traditional Brazilian foreign policy in 2019 - resulting in approximation with the Trump administration and the adoption of a hostile posture towards Beijing. Furthermore, it was found that Sino-Brazilian trade relations remained relatively stable in the period observed, which leads to the conclusion that, despite the political-diplomatic attrition, Chinese participation in the percentage of total Brazilian exports from 2019 to 2022 continued considerably high, which reveals the importance and reciprocal need from one country to the other.