Elias Jabbour, a far-left economics professor and staunch China apologist, was hired as an aide to Dilma Rousseff, the former Brazilian president who recently took over the leadership of the New Development Bank, also known as the BRICS bank.
Mr. Jabbour will on Wednesday attend the ceremony for the Special Book Award of China in Beijing. The award is bestowed upon some 15 foreign writers, translators, and publishers each year “for introducing China and Chinese culture to the world.” Mr. Jabbour is among this year’s winners for his book “Socialist Economic Development in the 21st Century.”
While no one would expect the nomination of someone highly critical of China to the Shanghai-based position, Mr. Jabbour’s appointment could ruffle feathers among Brazil’s traditional Western allies. In April, he wrote that Brazil “is challenging the U.S. economic weapon of mass destruction, the dollar, in cooperation with China.”
A member of the Communist Party of Brazil and a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Jabbour is a staunch defender of the Chinese regime. He has written that “by putting the people at the center, the Communist Party of China has put human life ahead of the economy,” and that the Chinese government built “the most advanced social engineering in the world.”
He has also defended the credibility of Chinese official economic data and criticized reporting on Chinese overseas intelligence activities. He told his YouTube followers that a 48-page UN report (which said that China had committed grave human rights abuses in Xinjiang against Uyghur minorities) had “no scientific credibility,” dismissing it as a product of Western pressure against Beijing.
In a podcast interview in 2022, Mr. Jabbour defended capital punishment for dissidents in socialist regimes. “O.K. [dissidents in Cuba were killed], but they were poor people at the service of a foreign power,” he said.
Earlier this year, Mr. Jabbour criticized Brazilian diplomacy for being the only BRICS country to vote in favor of a UN resolution calling for Russia to withdraw its military forces from Ukraine, arguing Brazil had nothing to gain in return.
Back in April, Mr. Jabbour publicly supported Ms. Rousseff’s nomination to head the BRICS bank, saying it was a “fundamental” move to “get the Chinese ready to support both the NDB and the BRICS.”
He has also written against the idea of Brazil maintaining an equal proximity to the U.S. and China, arguing that Brazil should be closer to China in order to participate in a “rearrangement of the international financial order.”
Soon after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration, the new Brazilian president made statements that were highly critical of the U.S. and Europe. In April, during a trip to Beijing, Lula said “no one will stop Brazil from improving its relationship with China.”
Correction: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the location of the New Development Bank. It is located in Shanghai, not Beijing.
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