State visits to Peru, Brazil boost pivotal relationships

President Xi Jinping's recent trip to Peru and Brazil boosted the traditional friendship between China and Latin America, and reiterated China's global vision of peace and common prosperity, which stands in stark contrast to the neoliberal hegemony of the Washington Consensus, with its wars, unilateral sanctions, economic coercion, tariffs and overseas military bases.

In Peru, Xi participated in the opening of the Chancay Port. A shared project of China and Peru, built as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, the port will serve as a crucial gateway linking Latin America and Asia, as well as promoting Latin American economic integration.

Furthermore, it is Latin America's first smart, green and low-carbon port, featuring advanced technologies such as automated cranes and electric driverless trucks.

With the opening of the port, the average transportation time from South America to the Asian market will be reduced from 35 to 25 days. In Peru alone, the port is expected to generate an additional $4.5 billion in revenue — just under 2 percent of the country's GDP — and create thousands of jobs.

Given that Peru shares borders with Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia, the port will serve as the starting point of a land-sea corridor between China and Latin America, giving rise to a dramatic increase in trade, investment, cooperation and friendship.

On Nov 17, President Xi traveled from Peru to Brazil. The China-Brazil relationship has gone from strength to strength in recent years, particularly under the Workers' Party governments of Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

China has been Brazil's largest trading partner for the past 15 years, and is a major investor in Brazilian industry and agriculture. Furthermore, Brazil is the largest supplier of agricultural imports to China.

At the conclusion of their bilateral meeting on Nov 20, Xi and Lula announced that China-Brazil ties will be elevated to a "community with a shared future for a more just world and a more sustainable planet". The two sides will also cooperate closely to align Brazil's development strategy with the BRI.

Rather than treating Brazil simply as a source of primary commodities, China has promoted cooperation with Brazil on green energy, digital innovation, economic diversification, advanced infrastructure and industrial modernization.

Unlike the West, which has always jealously guarded its technological supremacy, China's vision of a global community with a shared future involves encouraging sustainable development and modernization throughout the Global South.

With China's support, the countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific are starting to break the chains of underdevelopment that were imposed by the colonial and imperialist powers.

Aside from the growing economic relationship, Xi wrote in a signed article in Brazilian media that "China and Brazil, embracing our roles and responsibilities as major countries, have contributed to a multipolar world, conduced to greater democracy in international relations, and injected positive energy into global peace and stability".

China and Brazil have taken the lead in trying to reach a political settlement on the Ukraine crisis and are aligned on attempting to bring an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Both countries are pursuing sustainable development and modernization, and both support a fair globalization characterized by equality and common prosperity. In short, this is a relationship that is not only of great benefit to the two countries, but to the world as a whole.

In his speech at the 19th G20 Summit, Xi insisted on the crucial importance of addressing global inequality, of supporting developing countries to achieve modernization and pursue sustainable development, of supporting developing countries to adopt and integrate digital technologies, and of cooperating globally to tackle the environmental crisis.

The speech resonated loudly with the people of the Global South. As the Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro wrote in 2004, "China has objectively become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries … an important element of balance, progress and safeguarding of world peace and stability".

For that reason, the US is desperate to throw a spanner in the works to disrupt the growing ties between China and Latin America, and more generally, between China and the Global South.

In October, US President Joe Biden's trade representative Katherine Tai said she "would encourage our friends in Brazil to look at the risks" of closer ties with China, hinting that the US would punish such an unacceptable behavior.

US President-elect Donald Trump is, meanwhile, packing his cabinet with both China hawks and Latin America hawks, and will likely be even more aggressive in pressuring countries to toe the US line on China.

Such tactics will not work. The days of the Monroe Doctrine — enshrining the entire American supercontinent as the US' "sphere of influence" — are over. The nations of Latin America are asserting their sovereignty, and are joining hands with the peoples of the world to reject hegemony and create a future of global peace and common prosperity.

The author is co-editor of Friends of Socialist China, a London-based platform promoting understanding of Chinese socialism.?The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.