The contingent is symbolic, but it reflects both the current calm in relations between China and the United States and Brazil’s effort to position itself between the two great powers. For the first time, Chinese soldiers are taking part in a series of exercises organised each year by the Brazilian army. Not without a certain irony, the joint training, which will run until 17 September, is called “Operation Formosa”which is named after the city where they are developed, 80 kilometers from Brasilia, but which is also the name – “Beauty” – which Portuguese sailors gave to the island of Taiwan, today the biggest bone of contention between Beijing and Washington.
Most of the 3,000 men deployed for this meeting are Brazilian, but the US military sent 56 soldiers and the People’s Liberation Army 33. France, Germany and South Africa also sent officers. This is the first time since 2016 that the US and China have participated in joint military exercises. As in 2014, the US military invited China that year to take part in the world’s largest naval exercise, Rimpac, which takes place off the coast of Hawaii every two years. But it has not invited China since, accusing its main strategic competitor of militarising the South China Sea, while China denounces these training sessions more vehemently than ever as further evidence of Washington’s quest for hegemony.
Brazil has continued to strengthen its ties with China since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the presidency, with both countries posing as spokespeople for the southern nations. His government announced in July Brazil’s intention to join China’s “New Silk Roads” initiative, a loose framework but one that China sees as a validation of the world order it suggests. The same month, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun received Brazilian Army Chief Tomas Ribeiro Paiva in Beijing. The two militaries expressed their desire to deepen their cooperation.
Brasilia’s diplomatic equidistance
The US side was careful not to comment on the Chinese presence. “The Formosa exercise illustrates the partnership that has remained so strong, for two hundred years, between the United States and Brazil”Leonard Anderson, commanding officer of Marine Corps South, commented simply.
But the diplomatic equidistance practiced by Brasilia actually allows for symbolic progress, at a time when Beijing and Washington are trying to rebuild channels of dialogue, particularly military ones, shattered by the Trump years, those of the Covid-19 pandemic, then the episode, at the beginning of 2023, of the flight over American territory of a Chinese spy balloon.
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