Elias Jabbour: A new wave of globalization led by China brings new opportunities for developing countries

“China has now inaugurated a new wave of globalization where they open up new opportunities for development of global south countries,” Elias Jabbour, Professor of Theory and Politics of Economic Planning at Rio de Janeiro State University, said in an interview with Guangming Online, “China offers us a lot of opportunities that we didn't have in the last 40 years.”

As a prominent Marxism academic in Brazil, Jabbour has examined China as his study case for 25 years, and his book Socialist Economic Development in the 21st Century: A Century After the Bolshevik Revolution was published in 2022.

Jabbour shared his insight with Guangming Online on how can the Chinese practice help Brazil deal with the challenges it met. He pointed that the import of neoliberism ideas has cause infinite damage to Brazil’s development, and that’s why Chinese modernization, an alternative path towards development, is an essential experience to Brazil. Over the years, long-term targets have been set and met, and great progress has been made, which makes China “a great inspiration to Global South”, Jabbour explained.

Jabbour also exemplified bilateral cooperation between China and Bolivia, Argentina, as well as Iran, to elaborate on the win-win cooperation China promotes and how can developing countries benefit from their cooperation with China. “I think the great level of our cooperation with China will reach when China becomes a great partner in our reindustrialization,” Jabbour is optimistic about the China-Brazil relationship in the future, “In the sense, I think Lula da Silva has a great ideas about the relationship between China and Brazil.”