Could it have been a faux pas by his wife at a dinner last May in Beijing? Or was it perhaps his government’s warmth towards India? President Lula of Brazil has had time to ponder why there will be a glaring no-show at the summit for the Brics grouping of emerging economies which begins in Rio de Janeiro this weekend.
The key absentee will be President Xi of China, who will miss the summit for the first time since he took power 12 years ago. Beijing has given no explanation as to why he will not be attending, only confirming that Li Qiang, the premier, will be taking his place.
President Putin will also be staying home. But that was expected, given that there is an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against him, linked to the Ukraine war. As an ICC member, Brazil would be legally obliged to arrest him if he set foot on its territory.
Xi’s unexpected decision to not make the journey has set diplomatic tongues wagging in Brasilia and elsewhere. One working theory is that the president did not want any of his thunder stolen by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, who is being honoured by a formal state visit by Brazil in the immediate aftermath of the summit.
But another intriguing possibility is that the Chinese leader is unhappy, not with Lula, but with his wife, Rosangela Lula da Silva, known in Brazil as “Janja”, after an extraordinary turn of events eight weeks ago in Beijing.
Lula, Janja and dozens of senior Brazilian business executives were in China on a state visit, which was partly designed to promote the Brics alliance, whose core members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
In China, Lula promised his hosts that this weekend’s summit would be “the best Brics meeting ever held, since the bloc was created”. The assumption at that stage was that Xi would certainly be making the 24-hour air journey from Beijing to Rio.
On May 13, a banquet was held to conclude the visit and celebrate some of the billions of dollars of investment just signed in the Great Hall of the People. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Toasts were exchanged between the delegations. No speeches were expected. The event was closed to all press.
Then, just before the dessert course was served, there was an extremely unusual break of protocol. The first lady raised her hand and addressed Xi.
She was reported to have been directly critical of the Chinese social media company, TikTok, which, she said, had become a problem for the global left. She claimed its algorithm favoured right-wing views and was potentially harmful to children. Attendees later told Brazilian media outlets that there was palpable shock in the hall. One said that Peng Liyuan, China’s first lady, was “visibly disturbed” by Janja’s remarks, seeing them as “disrespectful to Xi Jinping”.
Lula has confirmed that his wife spoke at the event but denied it was awkward. He said Xi quickly agreed that Brazil “had the right to make its own regulations”.
But the story has renewed focus on the role of Janja in the Brazilian government, where first wives have previously fulfilled purely ceremonial roles.
Eyebrows were raised last November when the 58-year-old sociologist was heard sharing her views on the regulation of social media at a social gathering on the sidelines of the G20 conference, also in Rio de Janeiro. “I’m not afraid of you, f*** you, Elon Musk,” she said, during the live televised event.
Janja has said she has no interest in going to state dinners “just to accompany” her husband. And the twice-widowed Lula has staunchly defended her. When he was criticised for allowing her to be his representative for a nutrition conference in Paris in March his brusque reply was: “She will say what she wants and go wherever she wants.”
Whatever the true motivation, Xi’s absence in the forthcoming Brics summit is being “interpreted in Brasilia as a bit of a snub” said Oliver Stuenkel, an associate professor at the School of International Relations at Fundacao Getulio Vargas, a think tank.
What is now the Brics was first formed in 2009, in the wake of an article written eight years before by a Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O’Neill. He singled out Brazil, Russia, India, and China as the economies for investors to watch. He said they could all become major global economic powers by the middle of the 21st century.
The following year, South Africa was invited to join. The Bric became the Brics. Its proponents see it as a challenge to the extant postwar world order, for 70 years dominated by the dollar and a US-led monetary system.
Since its foundation, the group has launched its own development bank, supposedly a rival to the World Bank, and has talked of creating its own currency, although it has failed to achieve any consensus amongst its members as to how that might be achieved.
Recently the Brics has expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. It now represents 40 per cent of the world’s population.
Last year O’Neill said he felt that the Brics had lost its way and risked morphing into a club only useful for the promotion of broadly anti-western views, dominated by China. “The hodgepodge of new members appears to have been selected not for any long-term strategic reasons, but because they can be cajoled,” he wrote.
Stuenkel disagrees. The nations, he said, reflect an unavoidable reality in which China, India, and other mostly Asia and Middle Eastern nations become economic forces which cannot be ignored, and need to be understood.
“Brazil knows that its future, like it or not, will be increasingly tied to Brics countries,” he said.
