Guancha's interview with Cristovam Buarque: Brazil's educational system and relations with China-布阿尔克

From April 12 to 15, Brazilian President Lula paid a state visit to China. During the visit, China and Brazil signed a joint statement on deepening their comprehensive strategic partnership.

Lula believes that China is crucial to his goal of revitalizing Brazilian industry, and he plans to promote a number of policies, including: encouraging Chinese companies to establish new factories in Brazil, attracting more Chinese investment, and reducing the extent of dollarization in foreign trade, among others.

Over the past decade or so, Brazil has has been hit by a number of economic crises. Its traditional economic model of exporting primary resources, such as agricultural products, has not proven capable of further lifting Brazil’s economic progress.

Cristovam Buarque, member of the South Centre’s board, former Brazilisn Minister of Education and Senator, recently sat down for an interview with Guancha. He believes that education is key to Brazil’s further development, also expressing his views on how China and Brazil can further expand bilateral and multilateral cooperation, and how the world can adopt to a new multipolar world order.

Guancha’s interview with Cristovam Buarque

Below is a lightly edited transcript of the interview:

Guancha: In politics, you have consistently advocated for the importance of education in solving Brazil’s medium and long term problems. Could you briefly describe your proposal?

Cristovam Buarque: First of all, it’s a pleasure to be here, and wonderful to receive this question. Many times, they don’t put this question to me. But I think it’s very important to talk about that.

For many years, decades, we have been saying to the people, to the world, that the most important thing is the economy, is production. We have been forgetting that education is the main vector of progress. We need education, and not just professional education, but basic education, the education of the whole population. We need that, first of all to give efficiency to the economic process, and we need schools to have the same quality of education, in order to achieve a better social function. Education is basic to the economy and is basic to society. We need education to produce more and we need education to distribute production better. This is what I have been discussing in Brazil during my whole career as a politician.

Guancha: Could you describe the specific challenges facing Brazilian education system?

Cristovam Buarque: The specific challenge facing Brazilian educational system is to lead with two targets: to be among the betters in the PISA international evaluation, and to have educational social equality, such that poor children experience the same quality of schooling as rich children. To fulfill these two purposes, the challenge is to move from 6000 municipal systems to one national system.

Guancha: Do you think the same applies broadly to other countries as well? What are some key challenges that education can solve?

Cristovam Buarque: I think that what I’ve been saying to Brazil, it’s worthwhile to the whole world, to any country, but many other countries have done that already. We have examples of countries that were very backwards some years ago, that grew up thanks to education: Finland is an example, South Korea is another example. Some cities in China are doing that, not the whole country yet, but China is doing what I recommend to Brazil, to start revolution in education per city. It’s impossible to make the revolution spread through a country as big as China and Brazil. I think that we have examples that we should follow, and China is one.

Guancha: How should Brazil learn from China’s educational system?

Cristovam Buarque: We can learn from China’s national framework to basic education, which is different from our municipal system. A Chinese child is educated as Chinese, while a Brazilian child is educated as a municipal and individualistic person. The respect for Chinese history and heritage are present in the education of Chinese children and forms the Chinese ethos, while the Brazilian system is very much oriented to the individual and the present. We should also learn from the involvement of parents and greatparents in the care and education of Chinese children. Brazil leaves the education under total responsibility of teachers and school.

Guancha: China and Brazil are important trading partners, with Brazil’s export of agricultural and raw materials complementing China’s exports of machinery and electrical equipment. During president Lula’s recent visit to China, the two countries also signed a number of agreements on cooperation in energy, carbon credits, 5G network, financing and de-dollarization. What do you think is the most fruitful area for future cooperation? And how significant would cooperation between the two be for Brazil’s efforts to diversify its economy beyond commodities?

Lula’s April State visit to China

Cristovam Buarque: Brazil and China are today very tied. At least from the Brazilian point of view, China is the main partner in trading, a lot more important than, for example, United States and Argentina, the other two great partners. But we have been just trading in goods. We need more. For example, we need cooperation between our universities. We have to have programs, put together our students and Chinese students, our teachers and China’s teachers, to bring Chinese to Brazil, to send Brazilians to China. For many years, we have been looking to United States and Europe to study with a lot of scholarship. Let’s have more scholarships between Brazil and China.

We need cooperation also between scientific institutions. We have a very important group, for example, in the health system, health technology. We need to work closely with the Chinese scientists. We need cooperation in arts and culture, which would be very good. We need to bring to Brazil more artists from China and to send to China our artists. We need to translate more books from Chinese authors and to translate into Mandarin the work of Brazilian authors.

We have a world ahead to cooperate. Let’s not stop and do trade only. On trade, we already have good cooperation. Now we need to improve that to other sectors.

And finally, I think that we have to learn from China, the way China does politics. I’m not talking politics in this sense of congress. I’m talking also in the sense of government: China knows how to do projects. Brazil knows how to make the project but have terrible difficulty in executing the project. China can teach us how to execute our project. We have a lot to learn with China. And I think the cooperation would be good also to China.

Guancha: At the same time, Brazil has long standing security agreements with the US. In your opinion, how should Brazil balance relations with China and the US, which are both important partners to Brazil?

Cristovam Buarque: That would be an exercise in the future. We have to learn how to cooperate in this world, because we had the experience of mainly bilateral relationships, and a world with one pole, with one superpower.

Today, happily, the United States is no more the center of international geopolitics, we have China, we have Europe. We have to learn how to develop other kinds of relations. But I have been saying something more than that. I think that even China has to learn.

Up to now, international diplomacy, politics and external policy were made regarding one country in the whole world. I think that now we have to learn to see the world before the country. I used to say that diplomacy was made to the time when the world was a group of countries. Today, I say that each country is a piece of the world. This require a different mindset for the diplomats, for politicians engaged in cooperation and relations with the other countries. Brazil and China can learn together and teach one another.

Guancha: China and Brazil are both key members of BRICS. How can both work to increase cooperation under this framework? Also, as two institutions both focused on promoting the interests of developing countries, how should the work of BRICS and the South Centre intersect and interact?

Cristovam Buarque: I proposed yesterday that the South Centre should invite the new president of BRICS bank, our Brazilian politician Dilma Rousseff, to come to South Centre to meet with us. We have to be inside the BRICS bank. I said that we have expertise, we have knowledge of the South. Let’s make that available to the BRICS bank. Regarding China and Brazil, we have something very good: we have a Brazilian president of BRICS bank, and the BRICS bank is in Shanghai, China.

Dilma Rousseff takes office as the new President of the NDB in Shanghai, China on April 13, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

Let’s put together this cooperation, this coincidence, and let’s use the BRICS bank more. Personally, I think that we have to discuss a lot before that. I think that we should at least bring some other countries to BRICS and to BRICS bank. I think there are other countries that should be part of this experience, an experience that would change the world because it would be very important to this idea of a new geopolitics of multiple poles. BRICS is very important to this.

Guancha: What has been the effect of the war in Ukraine or Brazil, and how has China’s 12 point peace plan and proposed conflict mediation been received in Brazil?

Cristovam Buarque: This is something on which I have a different position as the Brazilian government today. I think that Brazil should not be involved in this conflict. There’s two ways to be involved. In the first way, Brazil is not: President Lula is quite clear, he’s not involved as a party militarily with one of the countries. This is OK.

But I have another position, no involvement even in the peace talks, because I think that Russia and Ukraine, they look so much like each other, in terms of literature, religion, language, history, that I think they will find that, in a certain moment, the internal forces in Russia and Ukraine will pressure their governments to come together and find the peace. Sure, if some countries, especially China and Europe, can help that, it would be okay.

But in the case of Lula, I have been saying that he has another role in the world. Lula should put a planetary statement to propose ways to come to three other peaces, different from the war between Russia and Ukraine: social peace, fighting against poverty; ecological peace, fighting for sustainable development; and migration peace, find a way to avoid millions of the people being forced to move from their country to another country, and some or most of the time not able find a new home. First of all, migrants might not arrive at the new country. Second, they might arrive but can not come in, because at the border they are stopped. And third, they will enter the new country, but will not be accepted legally.

Lula, I think, is the best man the world to produce a planetary statement. You might ask, but why not China? China is so special and so great and so big that perhaps it will not have this voice into the world: China is a hard power, Brazil can be a soft power, and we need soft power. For these 3 peaces, we need more soft power than hard power.

Guancha: Brazil’s economy has experienced a rather difficult decade in the 2010s, which has Led to rising domestic discontent and trouble. What do you think are the reasons behind this? How come Brazil overcome these challenges?

Cristovam Buarque: I think that the main reason why we’re in this situation with so rich a country is the lack of education, centuries without education for our people. The lack of education makes a country divided, socially divided. The main reason for the division of Brazil, we have to say Brazil is almost an Apartheid system, not racial apartheid as in South Africa since most of us are mixed; while there is some prejudice, some racism, but not racial apartheid.

But we do have a social apartheid, based on who has money, and who has no money. And having or not having money depends on having or not having education. And beside that, the lack of education is behind the fact that the politicians do not find a way to Brazil. We need education.

Beside that, we need better laws, to avoid corruption, and we need long term planning to our purpose. Brazil is very short term oriented. And this is a problem that we have to overcome.

Guancha: How would you overcome?

Cristovam Buarque: We have two strategies. In the long term, improved education is key. And in the short term, let’s get together. Lula has been saying that to finish the Ukrainian war, we just have to put Putin and Zelensky on the same table. I think that in Brazil, he should do the same with the opposition, even the bad guys, sitting together to discuss, to talk and to find a middle way.

It will not to be Lula’s way, Lula’s party’s way, and I hope we will never have the Bolsonaro people in government again, but we have to talk. The answer to your question is talk, talk, talk, with modesty. No one knows exactly what to do. So, let’s discuss. Let’s having conversations, as Lula proposed between Putin and Zelensky.

former Brazilian president Bolsonaro (PHOTO/Reuters)

Guancha: This sounds kind of similar to what China has been proposing based on traditional Chinese philosophy, of trying to find common ground and trying to come together, include all views and not just holding some as superior to others.

Cristovam Buarque: Yes, China has a long history of this kind of conversation to find a way forwards. Perhaps we can go back to Confucius to find that. It is a tradition in China to talk, to discuss, to find the middle way. We need to learn from the Chinese.

Guancha: Going back to the three peaces you talked about, is the way to achieve that just through dialogue or does it also require acquire something else?

Cristovam Buarque: Other things, but especially speeches at the United Nations, conversation everywhere. Now, two of these three peaces, they come together. Social peace will bring migration peace. If you look to Syria, for example, the migration was because of the civil war, but usually in the world, migration is due to poverty, i.e. social reasons. This is the case of central America, for example. Then these two peaces, they come together: if we solve poverty, we solve migration.

For ecological peace, we need more than that. We need, in a certain way, a cultural revolution, a mind revolution, to abolish the way that gross national product is used as the indicator of civilization. No, civilization is a lot more than production. And one of the things we need a lot more of is the respect of nature, respect of ecology. It means we need sustainability. This peace is more difficult than the other two, and more urgent for humankind; social and migration peace is more urgent to poor people, to migrants, but ecology peace is more important than any other to humankind.

Guancha: While relations between China and Brazil have mostly been unaffected by Brazil’s internal politics, China and other countries have been concerned by post-election violence after the closely fought 2022 Brazil general election. Given the continued poor state of Brazil’s economy right now, should the international community be concerned about Brazil’s stability?

Cristovam Buarque: We have to be concerned a bit everywhere in the world, and especially in Brazil we have concerns, democracy is very fragile everywhere, in Brazil perhaps more than in a lot of other countries, but there’s no danger. Brazilian democracy is stable, at least for many years ahead.

Guancha: Recently there has been increased talk of decoupling and confrontation on the global stage. Key to this seems to be America’s desire to see all countries adopt a more western model of democracy, of governance, while China believes that development should be or is the most important democratic right of the people. So what do you think of these narratives?

Cristovam Buarque: Thank you very much for this question. I’d like to talk a lot more about that. America is a case of success from the point of view of a rich country, a powerful country, but it’s not from the point of view of sustainability, it’s not from the point of view of inclusion of the whole population to its benefits. They have a lot of exclusion, especially of a racial orientation: black people have it worse than white people, although there are a lot of poorer white people today. It’s a success from the point of view of the nation in the short term, in the past, but they have no reason to be an example to be followed forever by everyone. This is an arrogance, this is an error, a mistake to try to impose not only democracy but also the American way of life. The American way of life cannot be the way of life of humankind in the future, we need other ways to live instead.

The Streets of San Francisco in the US (PHOTO/PGPF)

In the case of democracy, it was a very important factor to America, to some other countries, but each country has to look for their way of democracy. I put it like that, because democracy in its essence is the way to govern with the people. It’s not with the congress, with multiple parties, with elections, with electors as the king, not necessarily.

This is why I was criticized a lot in Brazil, because I wrote a book where I put the idea of the Chinese mode of democracy. People didn’t like that in Brazil, many friends of mine were unhappy with this expression that I put there. But I use it, and I would say China has a mode of democracy, which is probably not the way Brazil would use. Brazil has to find a new way, but not necessarily the American or the French or the Japanese way, and they all have different modes of democracy anyways. America has to stop the idea that its democracy is the only way possible. We have other ways of democracy in the world, and China, I think, is trying to find its way.

（Interview: Jersey Lee）

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