In Beijing, Lula endorses Xi’s position on Ukraine, Taiwan

Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have presented themselves as potential mediators for the war in Ukraine, declaring that negotiation is “the only viable way out of the crisis”.

In a joint statement after their meeting in Beijing late on Friday, Xi and Lula avoided the words “invasion” and “war” and offered few specifics about how to bring Russia or Ukraine to the table more than a year after Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, right, inspects an honour guard with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony held outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.Credit: Getty

But Lula said he supported China’s framework for ending the war in Ukraine, which does not call for Russia to withdraw its troops. He also called for China’s territorial integrity to be respected concerning Taiwan, a similar stance to the one French President Emmanuel Macron took last weekend after his trip to China and meeting with Xi.

The joint statement said that on Ukraine, “Brazil positively received the Chinese proposal, which offers reflections conducive to the search for a peaceful way out of the crisis”. The statement also said that the two leaders agreed that “dialogue and negotiation” were the only way to end the crisis and that China “welcomed Brazil’s efforts toward peace”.

US and some European officials have been critical of Xi’s 12-point outline of issues that should be considered in a peace agreement because China has not suggested that Russian forces must leave occupied Ukrainian territory as part of any deal.

The joint statement was much more direct about Chinese territorial integrity. Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy. “The Chinese side expressed great appreciation in this regard,” the relevant passage of the statement concluded.

Moritz Rudolf, a specialist in China’s foreign policy at Yale Law School, said that the statement showed that Beijing was having some success in arguing that Taiwan and Ukraine should be handled separately by the international community.

Chinese officials argue Taiwan is part of a single Chinese nation, but China sees Ukraine and Russia as two separate United Nations members for which “legitimate security concerns” on the part of Russia may make acceptable the use of force.

“Brazil as a country is more and more in line with the Chinese narrative,” Rudolf said.

In recent weeks, Lula has suggested that China should be part of a global effort to bring about peace talks, arguing that countries not directly involved in the conflict are better positioned to mediate the negotiations. The two countries are already part of BRICS, a trade bloc which also includes Russia, India and South Africa.

Lula introduced the idea of a peace group, and recently told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he would discuss the idea with Xi, making Lula the latest in a string of leaders offering a vision for possible negotiations.

Lula has condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but he has also suggested in the past that Zelensky and NATO shared some blame for the war. He has refused to sell weapons to Ukraine in an effort to maintain neutrality.

There have been no known peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv in the past 12 months, and each side insists the other has no interest in a ceasefire.

Brazil’s position is complicated by its reliance on Russia for about a quarter of its fertiliser imports, which are crucial to the South American nation’s enormous agriculture industry. Brazil is Russia’s largest buyer of fertiliser, purchasing roughly $US1.9 billion ($2.8 billion) in chemicals from Russia in 2019.

Fertiliser is big business for Russia, but is still dwarfed by its oil and gas exports.

Lula’s visit to China is part of an effort to repair relations that had suffered under Brazil’s previous president, Jair Bolsonaro. Xi gave Lula a red-carpet welcome to Beijing complete with military pageantry on Friday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.