I hope that I can come here again soon and share all the details about the Expo program with your audience. I am very pleased to be here today. Especially for having the opportunity of talking to millions of people and to show to them a little bit about Brazil. Talking about the cooperation between our countries, one of the most important things is cooperation between the peoples of both countries. I think that in Brazil and China people are crazy about the Internet, people use the web a lot, so we can use this modern link to understand each other better.

——CLODOALDO HUGUENEY

The relations between Brazil and China have experienced an extraordinary development in these 35 years. When we started relations trade was very small. Even the political ties were not very important. The high level dialogue was not regular between the two countries. Nowadays everything has changed.

Last year presidents Lula and Hu Jintao met three times. This year we already had two official visits from Chinese authorities to Brazil. First, the Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi; and then, the vice president Xi Jinping and this will be followed by the visit to China of our Foreign Minister, Celso Amorín, and President Lula, coming to China in the third week of May.

So, this shows that the relationship is flourishing and that we have a continued dialogue. Both presidents are going to meet during the G20 meeting in London.

On the other hand, on the economic front trade last year reached very high levels and grew very fast. Investment between our two countries is also starting to grow. So there are a lot of signs to know that this is now a relationship that is extremely important; and we want to see many results from the visit of President Lula. This way we will bring the relationship between our countries to a very high level.

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China’s trade with Brazil has experienced an extraordinary development, especially in the course of last year. Trade between these two countries grew by more than 60%. That is perhaps one of the highest rates of growth of Chinese exports to any country in the world. So, due to this fact China became Brazil’s second largest trading partner. This year, in the context of the global crisis, trade is feeling the effect of the downturn. Exports and imports are falling. But in spite of this fact, and is spite of the fact that is going to be a very difficult year for trade, the exports from Brazil to China are still experiencing some growth. And we hope that we can maintain high levels of trade this year. We also believe that trade between our nations can become an important instrument in the recovery of both economies in the way that both economies can resist better the effects of the crisis. On the part of Brazil, our exports to China are more concentrated on oil, soy beans and some other agricultural products; there are few industrial products exported from Brazil to China.

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We think that a bigger cooperation between our nations can help both countries to keep growing. The financial crisis affects everybody, but it affects mostly poorer countries, developing countries and the poor in these countries. Both governments have major responsibilities toward these persons I think that if we cooperate more, if we increase our economic relationship, if we promote trade and investment between Brazil and China, if we cooperate more in the scientific-technological area, we will be making a contribution toward maintaining the growth in both nations; and we will also be contributing to the world economy.

On the other hand, we do feel that our growing cooperation in supplying answers to the crisis, in coordinating these answers, in developing our thinking about how the world monetary financial system should change. We think that we should promote multilateralism and the idea of a multipolar world.

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International Relations in the end have relationships between the people as a foundation. If the country is better known in the other country, people understand each other, especially between countries such as ours, with very different cultures. But we also have many things in common. We should not forget that immigration from China to Brazil started in 1835. The Chinese went to Brazil to develop the culture of tea, to plant “cha”, and to develop the trade and the culture of silk. So, for many centuries trade between the two countries was very important. Many things we have in Brazil, like the fan or the form of the tiles of some of our old houses, come from China. So there have always been link between our nations. Although China has a history of five thousand years, there are also links that attach both peoples. We should develop this relationship in the human area more strongly. Nowadays, Chinese people admire Brazilian soccer, they like Brazilian music, but our art is very diverse, just like arts in China. Brazilian modern art is extremely interesting and diverse.

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I know it is going to be a big success. We have a strong link with Shanghai: Sao Paolo is Shanghai’s sister city. A big part of our business community in China lives in Shanghai. So, we are very proud to be part of this exhibition. Soon we will start building our site in the exhibition. We are also organizing a lot of cultural events for the Expo. I think the exhibition will be a great opportunity for the Chinese people to know better not only about the Brazilian economy and development, but also about our cultural life. We hope that in the Expo Brazil can show the best parts of itself.

We are still organizing the program. However, let me assure to the audience that come the day Brazil will bring some of the best musicians and artists. Chinese people will be exposed to some aspects of Brazilian culture that they do not know too much about.

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