Network Governance and the Making of Brazil's Foreign Policy Towards China in the 21st Century

Abstract

Driven by China's increasing global influence, China-Brazil relations have deepened significantly in the 21st century; for Brazil, this bilateral relationship has become one of the most important aspects of its foreign relations. This article aims at analysing how Brazil's foreign policy towards China was made and implemented during the eight years of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's presidency, and the first four years of Dilma Rousseff's presidency. While scholars agree that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not exclusively dominate this policy, little is known about which state and non-state actors were involved, how and why they interacted, and how their interactions influenced policy choices. The article starts by identifying the actors that played a significant role in formulating Brazil's China policy. Next, drawing on the concept of network governance, it explores the processes and mechanisms that governed the interactions among them. It concludes with an assessment of the democratic quality of this policy area.

Beijing’s Institutionalised Economic Statecraft Towards Brazil: A Case Study

“…Some argue (Alves, 2012, 2014), for example, that China's financial inducements via loans for infrastructure are economic exploitation as they grant its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) access to Brazilian oil and other strategic resources. Others (Cardoso, 2013, 2017), however, believe that China's economic cooperation with Brazil is aimed primarily at facilitating foreign policy goals on both the global and regional scales, as well as for the long run.…”

“…Aimed at promoting South–South relations, for example, Brazil plays a lead role in forging on China's behalf non-governmental channels for political exchange – also known as “track II diplomacy” – with countries in South America (Giraudo, 2020; Niu, 2019). Claiming to both be countries in social and economic transition, Brazil and China have coordinated with one another closely in launching and managing the BRICS bloc of “emerging national economies” (Cardoso, 2013; Pooja, 2017; Wang, 2017; Zhou, 2019). When Beijing under Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative, Brazil became China's first destination country in South America (Abdenur, 2019).…”