Graham thinking about China, Oil, trade and energy :

De-Scribed

Been offline for a bit so I don't know how much of this trickled through to the UK media, but Lula has been in China last week with hundreds of Brazilian business leaders. They're up to signing all kinds of trade agreements including a nuclear technology exchange.

Why? Brazil has some of the largest Uranium deposits in the world. China has the technical know-how to build nuclear power-stations (and weapons if it comes to it.)

I'm pretty convinced now that if the world doesn't do anything much about looking for alternative energy, we're going to be sleepwalking to a nuclear dependent future over the next 20 years.

China wants to put down a deposit on Brazilian uranium. Lula wants China in a block of the bigger, more advanced, developing countries (basically China, Brazil, India, ...) able to stand up to and negotiate with Europe and the US. Not clear how much more there is to Lula's strategy than this, though trade relations between Brazil and China have been increasingly friendly. Last year when flu killed off the Chinese poultry population, they covered it by importing from Brazil. Brazil already gets it's electronic consumer goods from China and can see China as a big market for it's agricultural products and natural resources.

This relationship is going to be interesting. If Lula's strategy works, Brazil, China, India will be reducing their dependency on the West by increasing free trade with each other.