One of the twenty agreements signed between China and Brazil during President Lula’s last state visit to the Asian country was a memorandum of understanding on strengthening cooperation in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The agreement defines at least five areas for dialog and cooperation regarding AI between the two countries: infrastructure, training and exchanges, exchange of experiences in applications and platforms, tackling AI security risks, and training in professional knowledge and skills.
On the Brazilian side, one of the aims of the cooperation is to promote the digitalization of the country’s industry, as the executive secretary of the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services, Márcio Elias, who signed the agreement with the National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China, told BdF in Beijing.
“We need to take the gains artificial intelligence can bring to the factory floor, to production processes, that is, productivity increase. AI will improve our competitiveness on the international stage,” said the executive secretary of the ministry, who was part of a delegation of 11 ministries from the Lula government to China.
He says that this is one of the objectives of the New Industry Brazil policy: “to make our industry more digital, more competitive, more productive, more sustainable and more export-oriented.” “China has experience in these areas. The country has great industrial productivity. Everyone knows that we can take advantage of this exchange of information,” said Márcio Elias in an interview with BdF in Beijing.
Back in Brasilia, the ministry secretary took part in the Brics High-Level Forum on Artificial Intelligence 2025, on Tuesday (20), organized with the Chinese government and with the participation of the Vice-Minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Xiong Jijun.
At the closing press conference of the state visit, President Lula said Brazil wants to invest in AI. “We want everything they [China] can share with us, and the right word is ‘share’ because we need to learn to work together so that things can bear the fruit we need,” said the president.
Laboratory and joint training
One of the proposals in the agreement is to create a joint AI laboratory “to strengthen research and innovation capacities in the sector.”
It also provides for joint efforts in “training large language and multimodal models, and encouraging technical exchanges and cooperation in talent training between universities, research institutions and companies in both countries.”
Brazil’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Luciana Santos, informed that there are increasing agreements being signed between the two countries on joint training.
“It’s a long-standing practice that we have with the Chinese in several Brazilian universities that already do this kind of cooperation. We want to expand it.”
The Brazilian minister recalled that one of the three memorandums of understanding that she signed during Xi Jinping’s trip to Brasilia in November was also about AI. The agreement provided for cooperation in the development of human resources, training of personnel and workforce, promotion of personnel exchanges through training courses, seminars, workshops and visits by academics, among other topics.
This agreement was made to “guarantee the exchange of students, teachers and even partnerships to carry out researches, which is also the great challenge and which is the best solution for you to advance in Research and Development”, said Santos.
In addition to AI, Márcio Elías says that the training and exchange of professionals, and the transfer of technology is also planned for a broader field through another agreement signed by his ministry, the Letter of Intent on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Investment Cooperation in the Digital Economy.
“This applies to e-commerce, digital platforms, streaming, video resources, in other words, services,” says Elías.
The ministry’s executive secretary says that the agreement with China will follow the guidelines of the Brazilian Artificial Intelligence Plan, launched last year during the 5th National Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation, which is expected to invest over US$ 4.7 billion by 2028.
The agreement has a 3-year term and is automatically renewed.
