The troubled relationship between the Bolsonaro family and China

Jair Bolsonaro is the first Brazilian president to be elected with a tough discourse on China, often criticizing Chinese investments in Brazil as a threat to national security and economic sovereignty. Despite that, in his first year in office, he established a pragmatic relationship with Beijing, including meetings with Xi Jinping and a successful trip to the Middle Kingdom.

The risk pervading this approach was his foreign policy of seeking full alignment with the U.S., while Donald Trump was waging a trade war against China. These latent tensions exploded in the controversy surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, with Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro—one of the president’s sons—engaging in a Twitter brawl with the Chinese ambassador in Brazil.

The blame game with China

Eduardo Bolsonaro is the most-voted member of Congress in the history of Brazil, and something of an informal foreign policy spokesperson for his family. In 2019, his father tried unsuccessfully to nominate him as ambassador to Washington D.C.

Congressman Bolsonaro is such a staunch admirer of Mr. Trump that he has been photographed with the U.S. president’s “Make America Great Again” caps. His anti-China rants are a carbon copy of Mr. Trump’s statements, blaming the Asian country for the pandemic and calling it “the Chinese virus.” In both Brazil and the U.S., this is an attempt to deflect responsibility for the countries’ failures in dealing with the outbreak.

It is doubtful that this kind of blame game may work...