Lula turns around Brazil's foreign policy

JUAN MIGUEL MUNOZ
São Paulo
The presidency of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva celebrated its first 100 days on Monday. More than three months in which the Government is dedicated to forging pacts in a Parliament in which it lacks a majority, is very divided and with groups that are very hostile to the Labor Party (PT) and its allied parties. But there is an issue in which the dependence on parliamentary agreements is much less: foreign policy, an area in which a radical turnaround can be seen with respect to the mandate of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. The Lula Administration resumes the tradition of advocating multilateralism and mediating initiatives.

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Tsai-McCarthy: a meeting in the electoral phase

XULIO RIOS
Although the White House has tried to downplay the meeting by assuring that "there is nothing atypical in that the presidents of Taiwan transit through the United States or in fact meet with members of Congress", the truth is that this was the first time that a meeting of this nature has been taking place on US soil since the break in diplomatic relations in 1979. Which is certainly rare.

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"You to Boston and I to California"

XULIO RIOS
Chance (or not) has meant that the imminent trip of President Tsai Ing-wen to Central America, with stops in the US, coincides with that of former President Ma Ying-jeou to mainland China. In both cases, there is a strong symbolic charge, but it also highlights the political priorities of the two options that are fighting to determine the immediate future of Taiwan.

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A new multipolar Middle East

JAVIER GARCIA
The agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, sponsored by China - which could also put an end to the war in Yemen shortly - is an event of special historical relevance and a clear example of how conflicts can be resolved in a multipolar world not constrained by the designs of a single hegemonic power. A model that they were certainly not used to in the region. China has emerged, to everyone's surprise, as the mediator that the Middle East needed. Something that for the United States, clearly aligned with one of the sides, has become totally impossible.

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Iran and Saudi Arabia restore their bilateral relations in Beijing

EUGENIO GARCIA GASCON
Iran and Saudi Arabia announced this Friday the reestablishment of bilateral relations that both countries abruptly interrupted in 2016. The agreement was reached in Beijing, so that China scores a significant diplomatic goal through which it continues to establish its influence in the Middle East to the detriment of from United States. Surprised by the announcement, in Washington they reacted shortly after with an uncomfortable, lukewarm and inconsequential response.

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Spain and China: reality and myth

XULIO RIOS
Next March 9 will mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Spain and China. From that already distant 1973 to today, a very important evolution of exchanges is verifiable, favored, among other things, by the mutual perception of being protagonists of parallel transitions that began almost in unison in both countries: in the second half of the XNUMXs, After the death of Franco, Spain began its "transition", and the same thing happened in China after the death of Mao, beginning the deployment of denguismo. In both cases it was something similar: a change of regime without a change of system. In addition, this common contemporary trajectory reached the common imagination of tragic episodes such as the respective civil wars, with unequal outcomes.

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The Ukrainian tragedy

RAFAEL POCH-DE-FELIU
One of the problems with the war in Ukraine is that we are not facing one war, but several. There is a reactionary war of Russia against Ukraine, open since the invasion of February 2022. There are elements of civil war between Ukrainians since the spring of 2014, caused by the non-recognition of the valuable internal diversity of Ukrainians in their different regions, without which the Russian invasion would have been very difficult, if not impossible. There is a war of hegemonism between NATO and Russia, without which the two previous ones surely would not have come to fruition, sponsored by the United States with its expansionist pressure towards the East since the false closing of the cold war thirty years ago. And there is a warming up of a great global war with China to neutralize its rise as leader of a non-Western pole in the world and of which the war in Ukraine is the prolegomenon.

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Inflating the threat balloon

XULIO RIOS
Will it be a spy balloon or not? Maybe with time it will be known. China says it entered US airspace accidentally and due to force majeure, which is for civil and scientific purposes. The Pentagon acknowledged that it did not pose a significant risk in terms of intelligence, but denied the major one.

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The Taiwanese Crossword

XULIO RIOS
One of the key issues on the agenda of that postponed China-US summit should be Taiwan, the "number one red line," as the Chinese authorities describe it. The lack of commitment in handling this dispute could fully condition bilateral relations, which just reached one of their lowest levels in recent times after the visit of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to the island. last August.

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Happy New Year, Hohhot!

Bai Jinna
Hohhot (China)
I am a student receiving her education in Beijing, whose policy was too strict for people to re-enter. My hometown, Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, has been under a wave of covid-19 for two months. So my mother decided to send me to Inner Mongolia - another region ruled by minority ethnic groups - to get my codes "clear" in order to enter Beijing.

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Local elections in Taiwan: some results that can be extrapolated?

XULIO RIOS
The political map resulting from the local elections held in Taiwan predicts a "long year" of 14 months until the presidential elections of 2024. As happened four years ago, the KMT leaves with good feelings; and as then, to consummate the long-awaited "double" he will need to tread very thinly in the coming months if he does not want to destroy this victory.

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The two Taiwan elections

XULIO RIOS
Taiwan will hold local elections on November 26. The combination of an increase in continental pressure on several fronts and the hypothetical exaggeration of the threat by the US could lead to the sentiment of the Taiwanese that the possibility of a conflict is not remote but real, contrary to what they imagined until now.

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