Lula was travelling in north-east Brazil, his main political bastion, eyeing municipal elections this year.

Brazil’s position on Taiwan was established in April in a Foreign Ministry statement that expressed “firm support to the One China Principle” and said China was “the sole legitimate government of the whole of China, and Taiwan being an inseparable part of the Chinese territory”.

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China is Brazil’s largest export market, mainly for soy and iron ore. Chinese companies are planning to increase their investments in Brazil, in power transmission, oil and electric vehicles, businessmen said at a Brazil-China meeting with major Chinese corporations last week in Shenzhen.

Marcos Caramuru, a China watcher and former Brazilian ambassador in Beijing, said he was seeing growing interest of Chinese companies in investments in electric vehicles and in infrastructure in Brazil, as well as new investments in areas where China has been investing for a while, such as the electricity sector and e-commerce.