China-Brazil poverty reduction cooperation in the perspective of the Global South

Editor's note: Lin Hua is the associate researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

As the host country of this year's G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil has highlighted the priority of tackling poverty and hunger and reducing inequality in the agenda setting of the summit. Brazil's active promotion of global anti-poverty and anti-hunger cooperation through the important platform of the G20 not only reflects the urgent desire of countries in the Global South to strengthen cooperation on poverty reduction, but also provides new opportunities for China-Brazil cooperation.

China and Brazil are both models of poverty governance

Through its "Targeted Poverty Alleviation" strategy, China has eliminated absolute poverty by 2020, realizing that 98.99 million rural poor people have been lifted out of poverty, accelerating the global poverty reduction process and making great contributions to the global efforts to reduce poverty. However, the elimination of absolute poverty is not the end of China's development path, nor the ultimate goal of its modernization, but rather the starting point of a new journey. China has put forward the goals of rural revitalization and common prosperity, aiming to enable all people to share the fruits of high-quality development.

As the largest developing country in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil has made visible achievements in its poverty reduction in recent years. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, Brazil's poverty rate has dropped from 38.8 percent in 2003 to 16.1 percent in 2023, witnessing one of the most significant poverty reductions within the Latin American and Caribbean region. Since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva officially assumed office in 2023, he has made the eradication of hunger and poverty his core concern, and has taken multiple measures in terms of food security, social assistance, and job creation, which have led to a significant reduction in the number of people suffering from both acute and chronic food insecurity.

Although China and Brazil are at different stages of poverty governance, both are actively working in their own ways to eradicate poverty and hunger for the benefit of their populations, which not only sets an example of poverty governance in the Global South, but also lays the foundation for driving changes in the international poverty reduction system.

China and Brazil jointly lead poverty reduction in the Global South

As the largest developing countries, respectively, in the Eastern and Western hemispheres, China and Brazil are both actively committed to global poverty governance.

Since the 1960s, China has been engaged in international cooperation on poverty reduction by providing non-reimbursable assistance to Asian and African countries. After the reform and opening-up, with the continuous improvement of its comprehensive national power, China has placed more emphasis on development cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation related to poverty governance, empowering target countries to reduce poverty independently. One of the objectives of the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China is to support developing countries in building infrastructure connectivity, so that they can better integrate into the global supply chain, industrial chain and value chain, and realize poverty reduction through development.

Since Brazil assumed the presidency of the G20, it has actively utilized this important international platform to call for attention to the issues of poverty and hunger. By establishing a global mechanism, Brazil hopes to promote inter cooperation between countries in the Global South, to jointly tackle poverty and realize development. At Brazil's urging, the G20 officially launched the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty at the 2024 summit. The alliance aims to globally pool funds, resources and experiences in poverty reduction, in order to implement proven public policies to effectively reduce hunger and poverty worldwide.

China and Brazil's cooperation will expand their leadership role in poverty reduction

While China and Brazil are taking the lead in poverty reduction individually, they are also expanding their leadership by strengthening their cooperation in poverty reduction. Although the poverty reduction practices of the two countries have their own characteristics and focuses, they share the same goal of poverty reduction and agree that development plays a decisive role. 

In the future, the poverty reduction knowledge sharing between China and Brazil should not be limited to policies and instruments related purely to absolute poverty, but should also be extended to issues that are crucial to improving social inequality, such as tax systems, micro-finance, the urban informal economy, women's economic empowerment, and slum (shanty town) upgrading. The sharing of poverty alleviation experiences and cooperation in poverty reduction practices between China and Brazil will not only benefit both countries, but will also have a positive impact on the task of fighting hunger and poverty globally, and energize the innovation of the international poverty reduction system.