When Li Keqiang, China’s premier, sought to emphasise the strength of Beijing’s relations with Brazil, he wrote of the Chinese love for Brazilian soap operas, such as the 1970s telenovela Escrava Isaura (Isaura the Slave Girl). The series, which played to enthusiastic audiences in China, traces the beautiful and modest Isaura’s tortuous battles with adversity.
A similar narrative could be applied — admittedly with a great deal less romantic heat — to Brazil’s seesawing economic relationship with China. The ardour that had attended the boom in commodity exports to China from the early years of the millennium had dissipated by 2015 as an economic crash threw millions out of work.
But in the same 2015 article in which he lionised Isaura, Li struck an optimistic tone. The “natural partners” would forge a new path that would transcend the reliance on commodity trade and emphasise Chinese investment in infrastructure to help Brazil avoid the “middle income trap”, Li wrote.