In the coming week, Brazil's President Lula visits China.

People around the world take part in Earth Hour, and the second summit for democracy is held.

It's March 23, 2003, in time for the world next week. I'm Bob McMahon. And I'm Carly Ann Robbins.

Bob, let's start in Beijing, where next week, Xi Jinping will host Brazil's president,

Lula. This follows Xi's red carpet tour of Moscow, and China's surprise success brokering a maybe

rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. She's clearly eager to establish his credentials

as a diplomatic player, but what's Lula's interest in this trip? Well, Lula is very interested

in keeping the ties open with China. Even though he represents a big, vibrant democracy

in China, an increasingly authoritarian

country. He is going to continue to try to keep these ties open. These are the countries, by the way,

that are the B and the C and the Bricks movement, which is still a thing. And we should note that

Lula has been twice before visited China in an official capacity as president. He's coming with a delegation of

something like 240 business representatives. This is a big trade relationship. 22 bilateral

trade between the two countries was $172 billion. If you compare that to the U.S. Brazil,

which was 88 billion, you see the scale of this. So twice the bilateral trade relationship

and volume of the

U.S.-Brazil relationship.

And he wants to say Brazil and China are back in business.

Bolsonaro had a pretty cagey relationship with China, on the one hand, acknowledging the

many things that China could deliver, but he was also, in his own way, wary of China as a country

that he saw as sort of taking advantage of Brazil.

And he was, you know, in his reputation as Trump of the Tropics, Bolsonaro was trying to

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