RIO DE JANEIRO – China was on the defensive in Brazil.
The Trump administration had been warning allies around the world to avoid Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, denouncing the company as a dangerous extension of China’s surveillance system.
Brazil, ready to build an ambitious billions of dollars worth of 5G wireless network, has openly taken President Trump’s side, with the son of the Brazilian president – himself an influential member of Congress – promising in November to create a secure system “ without Chinese espionage ”.
Then, pandemic policy overturned everything.
With Covid-19 deaths reaching their highest levels so far, and a dangerous new virus variant chasing Brazil, the country’s communications minister went to Beijing in February, met with Huawei executives at its headquarters and made a statement. very unusual request to a telecommunications company.
“I took advantage of the trip to ask for vaccines, which is what everyone claims,” said Minister Fábio Faria, talking about the 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 seemed to have barred a few months earlier, will be allowed to participate.
The turnaround is a sign of how politics in the region have been mixed up by the pandemic and Trump’s departure from the White House – and how China has started to turn the tide.
China has spent months brushing off resentment and distrust as the place where the pandemic started, but in recent weeks its diplomats, pharmaceutical executives and other energy brokers have received dozens of vaccine orders from desperate officials in Latin America, where the pandemic is taking a devastating toll that grows every day.
Beijing’s ability to mass-produce vaccines and ship them to developing countries – while rich countries, including the United States, are accumulating many millions of doses for themselves – offered a diplomatic and public relations opening that China readily offered. took advantage.
Suddenly, Beijing finds itself with a huge new influence in Latin America, a region where it has a vast network of investments and ambitions to expand trade, military partnerships and cultural ties.
Last year alone, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, a right-wing leader who was closely aligned with Trump, discredited the Chinese vaccine while it was undergoing clinical trials in Brazil and ended an effort by the health ministry to order 45 million doses.
“The Brazilian people WILL NOT BE COBAIA FROM ANYONE,” he wrote on Twitter.
But with the departure of Trump and Brazilian hospitals overwhelmed by a wave of infections, the Bolsonaro government struggled to fix barriers with the Chinese and asked them to speed up tens of millions of vaccine shipments, as well as the ingredients to produce the vaccines. mass vaccines in Brazil.
The precise impact of the vaccine request to Huawei and its inclusion in the 5G auction is not clear, but the moment is impressive, part of a radical change in Brazil’s stance towards China. The president, his son and the foreign minister have abruptly stopped criticizing China, while office officials with attacks on the Chinese, like Faria, were furiously working to approve new vaccine shipments. Millions of doses have arrived in the past few weeks.
“With Latin America’s desperation for vaccines, this creates a perfect position for the Chinese,” said Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American studies at the United States Army War College, specializing in the region’s relationship with China.
With the coveted 5G contracts at stake – a source of intense geopolitical dispute around the world, including in countries like Britain and Germany – Huawei has set up a timely charm offensive in Brazil.
Provided software to hospitals to help doctors on the front lines of the pandemic. Most recently, she donated 20 oxygen-producing machines to the city of Manaus, where Covid patients died of suffocation in February when hospitals ran out of oxygen.
“May our joint efforts save lives!” the chinese embassy in brazil said in a message on Twitter announcing the gift.
Before the first vaccines left the assembly lines, Huawei seemed to be missing out on the 5G contest in Brazil, left aside by the Trump government’s campaign against it. The largest nation in Latin America was just a few months away from holding an auction to create its 5G network, a comprehensive update that will make wireless connections faster and more accessible.
Huawei, along with two European competitors, Nokia and Ericsson, aspired to play a leading role in partnering with local telecommunications companies to build the infrastructure. But the Chinese company needed the green light from Brazilian regulators to participate.
The Trump administration acted aggressively to frustrate him. During a visit to Brazil last November, Keith Krach, then the State Department’s chief economic policy officer, called Huawei an outcast in the industry that needed to be blocked from 5G networks.
“The Chinese Communist Party cannot be entrusted with our most sensitive data and intellectual property,” he said in a November 11 speech in Brazil, during which he referred to Huawei as “the backbone of the CCP’s surveillance state.”
Krach argued that “free nations” need to agree to unite around a “clean network” that excludes Huawei, because “our security chain is as strong as its weakest link”.
Weeks after the visit, Brazil seemed to agree with Washington’s efforts to blacklist Huawei. In a note released after the Krach meeting, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil said that Brazil “supports the principles contained in the proposal for a Clean Network made by the United States”.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the president, who headed the Chamber of Deputies’ foreign affairs committee, said in a tweet that Brazil would support Washington’s pressure.
China had already faced contempt in some parts of Latin America at the beginning of the pandemic, as concerns that it had been careless in allowing the virus to escape its borders took root. Beijing’s reputation suffered an additional blow in Peru after exporting cheap and unreliable tests from Covid, which became a misstep in the country’s efforts to contain the contagion.
But China found an opportunity to change the narrative earlier this year, as its CoronaVac became the cheapest and most affordable vaccine for developing countries.
With the pandemic under control in China, Sinovac, maker of CoronaVac, began shipping millions of doses abroad, offering free samples to 53 countries and exporting to 22 countries that placed orders.
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When the first doses of CoronaVac were administered in Latin America, China attacked the wealthy nations that did little to ensure immediate access to vaccines in the poorest countries.
“The global distribution of vaccines must be fair and, in particular, accessible and economically viable for developing countries,” said Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a speech at the end of last month. “We hope that all countries with capacity will join hands and make the appropriate contributions.”
At the end of February, while the first doses of vaccines from China were being administered in Brazil, the country’s telecommunications regulatory agency announced rules for the 5G auction, which is scheduled to take place in July, which does not exclude Huawei.
The shift in Brazil reflects how the Trump-led campaign against Huawei has lost momentum since its defeat in the November election. Britain said it would not ban equipment made by Huawei in its new high-speed 5G wireless network. Germany signaled an approach similar to that of Great Britain.
Thiago de Aragão, a political risk consultant based in Brasilia 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, left the Brazilian government unenthusiastic about being on an equal footing with Washington, he said, and China’s ability to make or break the initial phase of the country’s vaccination effort. Brazil made the prospect of angering the Chinese by banning unsustainable Huawei.
“They were facing certain death in October and November and are now back in the game,” de Aragon said of Huawei.
The request for vaccines by the Brazilian communications minister, Faria, came when it became clear that Beijing held the keys to speeding up or strangling the vaccination campaign in Brazil, where more than 270,000 people died from Covid-19.
The only reason Brazil had a few million doses of CoronaVac on hand in early February was that one of Bolsonaro’s rivals, São Paulo governor João Doria, had negotiated directly with the Chinese.
In an interview, Faria said there was no exchange suggested in his request to Huawei for help with vaccines. In fact, he said, he also asked executives at competing telecommunications companies in Europe if they could help Brazil get photos.
“Vaccines versus 5G were not put on the table,” he said, describing the vaccine help request as appropriate.
On February 11, Mr. Faria posted a letter of the Chinese ambassador to Brazil, in which the ambassador took note of the request and wrote: “I attach great importance to this matter”.
In a statement, Huawei did not say it would supply vaccines directly, but said the company could help “communicate openly and transparently on a matter involving both governments”.
China is also the dominant vaccine supplier in Chile, which has set up the most aggressive inoculation campaign in Latin America, and is sending millions of doses to Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia.
In a sign of China’s growing influence, Paraguay, where cases of Covid-19 emerge, have been struggling to gain access to Chinese vaccines because they are among the few countries in the world that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.
In an interview, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay, Euclides Acevedo, said that his country seeks to negotiate access to CoronaVac through intermediary countries. Then he made an extraordinary opening for China, which spent years trying to get the last countries that recognize Taiwan to change their alliances.
“We hope that the relationship will not end with vaccines, but will gain another dimension in the economic and cultural spheres,” he said. “We must be open to all nations as we seek cooperation and, for that, we must have a pragmatic vision.”