RIO DE JANEIRO – China was on the defensive in Brazil.
The Trump administration has warned allies around the world to avoid Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, and to denounce the company as a dangerous extension of China’s surveillance system.
Brazil, ready to build an ambitious multi-billion dollar 5G wireless network, has sided with President Trump, while the son of the Brazilian president – an influential member of Congress – has vowed in November to secure a secure create system ‘without Chinese espionage’.
Then the pandemic politics increased everything.
With the deaths of Covid-19 to their highest levels to date, and a dangerous new virus variant besieging Brazil, the country’s communications minister went to Beijing in February, meeting with Huawei executives at their headquarters and a lot of unusual request from a telecommunications company.
“I used the trip to ask for vaccinations, and that’s what everyone wants,” said Minister Fábio Faria about his meeting with Huawei.
Two weeks later, the Brazilian government announced the rules for its 5G auction, one of the largest in the world. Huawei, which the government apparently banned just months before, will be allowed to participate.
The face is a sign of how politics in the region through the pandemic and the departure of Mr. Trump was ousted from the White House, and how China began to turn the tide.
China has been holding back resentment and mistrust for months when the pandemic began, but in recent weeks its diplomats, pharmaceutical executives and other power brokers have made numerous requests for vaccinations of desperate officials in Latin America, where the pandemic is devastating toll growing by the day.
Beijing’s ability to mass-produce vaccines and send them to developing world countries – while rich countries, including the United States, store many millions of doses for themselves – offered diplomatic and public relations that China easily tackled.
Suddenly, Beijing finds itself with tremendous new leverage in Latin America, a region where it has a vast network of investments and ambitions to expand trade, military partnerships, and cultural ties.
Only last year, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, a right-wing leader who is now working with Mr. Trump was disrespecting the Chinese vaccine while undergoing clinical trials in Brazil, and closed the Ministry of Health’s attempt to order $ 45 million. doses.
“The Brazilian people will not be anyone’s pigs,” he wrote on Twitter.
But with Mr. Trump away and Brazilian hospitals overwhelmed by a surge of infections, Mr. Bolsonaro’s government scrambled to repair fences with the Chinese and asked them to speed up tens of millions of vaccines, as well as the ingredients to mass-produce the shots. in Brazil.
The exact impact of the vaccination against Huawei and its inclusion in the 5G auction is unclear, but the timing is striking, as part of a strong change in Brazil’s position vis-à-vis China. The president, his son and the foreign minister suddenly stopped criticizing China, while cabinet officials, such as Mr. Faria, was getting new vaccines approved. Millions of doses have arrived in recent weeks.
“With the desperation in Latin America for vaccines, it creates a perfect position for the Chinese,” said Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the United States Army War College, who specializes in the relationship between the region and China.
With the coveted 5G contracts at stake – a source of intense geopolitical jockey worldwide, including in countries such as Britain and Germany – Huawei has sparked a timely charm attack in Brazil.
It provided hospitals with software to help doctors at the forefront of the pandemic. More recently, it donated 20 oxygen-making machines to the city of Manaus, where Covid patients suffocated to death in February when oxygen ran out at hospitals.
“May our joint efforts save lives!” the Chinese Embassy in Brazil said in a message on Twitter announcing the gift.
Before the first vaccines rolled off the assembly line, Huawei looked like it had lost the 5G game in Brazil, which was sidelined by the Trump administration’s campaign. Latin America’s largest country was only a few months from the auction to create its 5G network, a comprehensive upgrade that will make wireless connections faster and more accessible.
Huawei, along with two European competitors, Nokia and Ericsson, has sought to play a leading role in collaborating with local telecommunications companies to build the infrastructure. But the Chinese company needed the green light from Brazilian regulators to participate.
The Trump administration has moved aggressively to stop it. During a visit to Brazil in November last year, Keith Krach, then State Department’s Chief Economic Policy Officer, called Huawei a pariah of the industry that had to be excluded from 5G networks.
“The Chinese Communist Party cannot be trusted with our most sensitive data and intellectual property,” he said in a November 11 speech in Brazil, referring to Huawei as “the backbone of the CCP surveillance state.”
Mr. Krach argues that ‘free nations’ should agree to merge a ‘clean network’ that excludes Huawei, because ‘our security chain is just as strong as its weakest link’.
Weeks after the visit, Brazil appears to be on board with Washington’s efforts to blacklist Huawei. In a statement issued after the meeting of Mr. Krach was issued, Brazil’s foreign ministry said Brazil “supports the principles in the Clean Network proposal made by the United States.”
Eduardo Bolsonaro, a son of the president, who headed the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Congress, said in a tweet that Brazil would support the pressure on Washington.
Early in the pandemic, China suffered too little in some parts of Latin America because of concerns that it was careless to let the virus slide outside its borders. Beijing’s reputation took an additional hit in Peru after conducting cheap, unreliable Covid tests, which became an early misstep in the country’s efforts to recover contamination.
But China was given the opportunity to shift the story early this year as the CoronaVac became the cheapest and most accessible vaccine for countries in the developing world.
With the pandemic under control in China, CorovVac manufacturer Sinovac began shipping millions of doses abroad, offering free samples to 53 countries and exporting them to 22 countries that placed orders.
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Since the first doses of CoronaVac were administered in Latin America, China has been looking for affluent countries that have done little to guarantee rapid access to vaccines in poorer countries.
“The global distribution of vaccines must be equitable and especially accessible and affordable for developing countries,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a speech late last month. “We hope that all countries that have the capacity will join hands and make proper contributions.”
In late February, when the first doses of China’s vaccines were administered in Brazil, the country’s telecommunications agency announced rules for the 5G auction, which is expected to take place in July, which does not exclude Huawei.
The change in Brazil reflects how the campaign against Huawei led by Mr. Trump driven, has lost momentum since his defeat in the November election. Britain has said it will not ban equipment manufactured by Huawei from its new high-speed 5G wireless network. Germany has adopted a similar approach as Britain.
Thiago de Aragão, a political risk consultant in Brazil who focuses on China’s relations in Latin America, said two factors saved Huawei from a humiliating defeat in Brazil. The election of President Biden, who sharply criticized Brazil’s environmental record, made the Brazilian government unconcerned about being in step with Washington. Chinese by banning Huawei unbearably.
“They faced a certain death in October and November and now they are in the game again,” said Mr. De Aragão said about Huawei.
The request for vaccinations by the Brazilian Minister of Communications, Mr. Faria, occurred when it became clear that Beijing had the keys to accelerate or accelerate the vaccination campaign in Brazil, where more than 270,000 people died from Covid-19.
The only reason Brazil had several million doses of CoronaVac on hand in early February was that one of Mr.’s competitors Bolsonaro, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria, negotiated directly with the Chinese.
In an interview, Mr. Faria said no pro quo was proposed in its request to Huawei for help with vaccines. He said he had also asked executives at competing telecommunications companies in Europe if they could help Brazil get shots.
“It was not put on the table, vaccines against 5G,” he said, describing the request for help with vaccinations as appropriate.
On February 11 Mr. Faria posted a letter of China’s ambassador to Brazil in which the ambassador noted the request and wrote: “I attach great importance to this matter.”
In a statement, Huawei did not say it would provide vaccines directly, but said the company could help with “communication in an open and transparent manner on an issue involving the two governments.”
China is also the dominant provider of vaccines in Chile, launching the most aggressive vaccination campaign in Latin America and sending millions of doses to Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia.
As a sign of China’s increasing leverage, Paraguay, where Covid’s 19 cases are rising, has struggled to gain access to Chinese vaccines, as it is one of the few countries in the world to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China considered part of its territory. .
In an interview, Paraguayan Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo said his country was seeking to negotiate access to CoronaVac through intermediaries. Then he makes an extraordinary overture to China, which for years has been trying to get the last few countries that Taiwan recognizes to change their alliances.
“We would hope that the relationship does not end on vaccines, but that it takes on a different dimension in the economic and cultural sphere,” he said. “We must be open to every nation as we seek cooperation, and for that we must have a pragmatic vision.”