Chinese Reactions to Attempted Insurrection in Brazil and the US

Chavi Hillman-Emina is a senior at Agnes Scott College majoring in International Relations with a focus in Asian Studies. She is currently an intern within the Carter Center’s China Focus.

On January 8th of this year, a week after Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration, thousands of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters attacked and vandalized Brasília’s supreme court, congress, and the presidential palace. There was apparent resistance towards the recent presidential election results since October 2022, as many of Bolsonaro’s supporters felt that the election was ‘stolen’ and made a number of pleas to the Brazilian military to ‘save’ the election since late 2022. There was even an attack on the Brasília Federal Police headquarters in retaliation to their ignored requests. The attempt to invite military involvement is, in part, an appeal to Brazilian history, as the military once intervened by establishing a “tutelary authoritarian regime” when it rejected Brazil’s 1964 election results. Despite this fact, no action was taken by the military in support of those protesting the election. By contrast, there are active investigations into those involved, and several arrests have been made since the riots. 

As many observers have pointed out, there are striking similarities to the attack on the United States Capitol from supporters of President Donald Trump following the 2020 presidential election. The events of January 6th took place in response to Trump’s accusations of election fraud. Members of Congress were forced to seek shelter as the rioters forced their way into the Capitol after assaulting Capitol police. Hours after the initial invasion, President Trump asked his supporters to ‘go home in peace’, but it was too late and, on January 13th, he was impeached for a second time for ‘incitement of insurrection’. Today, many have already been convicted, and trials are still being conducted to sentence all who terrorized the nation’s capital two years ago.   

To what extent did the Brazilian riots on January 8, 2022 draw inspiration from the Capitol Riots on January 6, 2021? How did Chinese state and society comment on each incident? To what extent did China’s bilateral relations with either country—the United States and Brazil—influence China’s response?  

Understanding the Context of Brazil-China Relations

To provide effective background for comparison, the relationship between China and Brazil appears to be on an upward trajectory following Lula da Silva’s recent win, evidenced by Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan’s attendance of the inauguration and the fact that both states have served as members of BRICS since 2001. According to Xinhua, Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized ‘the development of the China-Brazil comprehensive strategic partnership’ as he congratulated Lula during his Presidential inauguration. Xi expressed interest in the two countries continual support of one another as they walk a ‘development path in line with their own national conditions’. Though Xi has not been among the world leaders that publicly condemned the recent attack on the Brazilian capital, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin emphasized Brazil’s role as one of China’s strategic partners and the Chinese government’s full support of Brazil’s approach to reintroducing social and national order.  

While China’s relationship with the United States is more adversarial, it’s notable that former President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was considered fairly controversial in China before his supporters’ attack on the capital. Relations between the two nations, as described by Brookings expert Harold Trinkunas, were ‘rocky’. For example, there have been complaints from the Brazilian manufacturing sector about unfair competition and lack of reciprocity in the Chinese market. Tensions were also heightened during the peak of the pandemic when Brazil was seeking Chinese assistance in response to the virus and simultaneously furthering global criticism of China regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of Bolsonaro’s term as president, he took to Congress to persuade against the nation being taken advantage of by China economically. 

Contributing to tensions, the former president also argued that Brazil was giving China too much control in the nation’s reserves of niobium, a valuable material additive to steel. Despite a more tenuous bilateral relationship under Bolsonaro, the two nations have maintained a working partnership with one another as it serves to benefit them equally. China remains one of Brazil’s most significant political and economic partners. President Lula Da Silva recognizes this and in a Twitter post depicting Brazil’s newly elected president and Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan almost a week before the insurrection in Brasília, he said ’China is our biggest trading partner and we can further expand relations between our countries’. 

Comparing China’s Response to the Brazil and U.S. Riots 

While the January 6th insurrection in China is attributed to failures in American governance, the attacks on the Brazilian capitol have been primarily attributed to U.S. influence. Notably, China leveraged January 6th to retaliate against the American response to the protests that took place in Hong Kong a year prior. According to TIME, Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, criticized the contrasts being made between the events that took place in Hong Kong and the U.S.. Hua is quoted saying, “Now the U.S. mainstream media had unanimously criticized violent Trump fans in [Washington], saying it’s a violent event and those protesters are mobs, extremists … But what description did they use on the Hong Kong protest? ‘Beautiful sight’.” The Thursday following that Monday’s insurrection on the Capitol, the hashtag “#Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol Hill” had obtained around 500 million interactions on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.   

In Brazil, however, China largely absolved Brazil of any specific failures of democracy, and instead attributed the riots to the malign influence of American democracy and Donald Trump. Chinese concerns centered around the ties between the riots and the January 6th insurrection in 2021, Jair Bolsonaro being a South American version of Donald Trump, and the harrowing possibility that the active attempt to override democracy could spread throughout other South American countries. Experts have looked into the roles of social media and how it fueled the events that took place in both countries since their presidential elections. A Chinese political expert’s observation of the events in Brazil, for example, as having ‘consistent logic’ with that of the U.S. in the denial of electoral results and the system in which it operates. They also expressed the potential for this ‘Capitol Hill riot’ to be repeated in other Latin American nations as a direct result of U.S. influence. This concern is significant due to the insight it gives towards perspective within the Chinese media and public when observing worldly events. It offers a necessary narrative to an already complex situation, giving way to the opportunity for further awareness. 

Chinese experts are not alone in making this comparison. Bolsonaro has supported several of Trump’s policy proposals and has been considered to have a similar ‘ruling philosophy’ to that of Trump. CNBC reported that since his refusal to concede, Jason Miller and Steve Bannon, two key strategists to Trump, have been advising Bolsonaro. In addition to this, Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo met with Trump in Mar-A-Lago, Florida, in November of 2022. Zhou Zhiwei, a Latin American studies expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed to the close relationship between Trump and Bolsonaro. In their comments to The Global Times, Zhou located the origins of the riots in Brazil and the United States at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Their 2019 conference was attended by Eduardo Bolsonaro and notable American conservatives. Zhou stated that ‘Brazil is an important part of CPAC’s global outreach to far-right conservatives, and whether Lula can contain the flames of the far right is not only crucial for Brazil but also Latin America’.   

Moreover, the Tuesday following the attack on Brasília Chinese state tabloid The Global Times remarked that the riots were indicative of a problem with democracy as a whole, not simply the rise of Trump in the Republican Party. ‘The emergence of “Capitol riots” is not simply because of Trump in the Republican Party, but in the U.S. as a whole, something is terribly wrong with the political system’, one commenter remarked, and ‘the “Capitol riot” sets a poor precedent for the world. Now people can see that the “US-style democracy” not only collapsed inside but also began to roll down with the surrounding rocks,’ the article goes on. Chinese experts have expressed concern with the possibility of these kinds of instances occurring in other Latin American countries because of the impact of “American democracy.”’ 

Chinese social media news platform, Toutiao published an article detailing the attack on Brazil’s capitol; in addition, were comments posted by readers who expressed their thoughts on the riots. Much of what was said is consistent with the allegation that what happened in Brasília is a byproduct of American democracy. 

Caption: Chinese social media news platform, Toutiao published an article detailing the attack on Brazil’s capitol. Comments posted by readers is consistent with Chinese state media’s narrative that what happened in Brazil is a byproduct of American democracy.

Last but not least, there were also accusations from American news outlets of social media platforms, specifically the Chinese app Kwai, distributing misinformation during the Brazilian elections, similar to what was said about Facebook during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Since the riots in the U.S. Capitol, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has led the investigation into the event, those involved, and what platforms enabled it. One of the platforms in question was Facebook which, according to ProPublica has yet to submit all information requested by the committee. Like Facebook, Kwai has a large user pool worldwide and specifically 45 million active users in Brazil, which is roughly 20% of the country’s total population. According to SEMAFOR, experts believe apps like Twitter and Telegram played prominent roles in the attacks on Brazil’s Capitol. At the same time, many Brazilians attribute some of the blame to Kwai, where violent rhetoric and conspiracies were circulating. The Brazilian investigative news outlet Agência Pública reported the app as responsible for circulating misinformation about the presential election in September of 2022. The social media platform also released a statement via Twitter claiming they were ‘working to contain the advancement and spread of content that has the potential to harm the democratic process’.   

The Key Contrast 

To conclude, the attacks on democracy in Brazil and the United States grew from similar beliefs and both came under Chinese criticism. However, from the perspective of Chinese political voices, news, and social media outlets, the two occurrences are directly related to the erosion of American democracy. In a way, Chinese propaganda almost absolves Bolsonaro and his radical supporters of accountability because of their apparent influence from right-wing United States politics. China seems to be optimistic about its future relationship with Brazil in light of President Lula da Silva’s new term. China’s relationship with Brazil is drastically different from that of the U.S., which could be the reason China seems less critical of and quick to condemn the rioting in Brazil. What was labeled as the failure of American democracy back in 2021 is now considered to be the fault of American influence in South America in 2023. 

Moreover, these two recent examples of the erosion of democracy further validate the Chinese government’s belief that ‘the road to prosperity no longer runs through liberal democracy’. In 2019, President Xi Jinping stated that ‘China’s people’s democracy is a type of whole process democracy’. The Diplomat explains that China’s new focus in regards to democracy is an active effort to change the narrative and exemplify China’s political system as ‘meritocratic, unchallengeable, and superior to Western democracy’. China believes the American style of democracy is faulty in practice, and the U.S. believes the same in reference to China’s communist dictatorship. Maybe if one of the two adopted the approach of the other, criticism could become few. Does this mean China and the U.S. could resolve their differences altogether? A number of other factors would likely suggest otherwise.