Brazil has profited handsomely over the past decade from its economic relationship with China. Exports to the People's Republic have shot up nearly 20-fold since 2000, and last year alone, Brazil enjoyed a bilateral trade surplus of $5.2 billion, largely thanks to China's seemingly insatiable appetite for iron ore and soybeans.
In 2009, China supplanted the United States to become Brazil's biggest trade partner, an arrangement that allowed Brazil to skirt the global recession by insulating it from the precipitous drop in exports that most other Latin American countries suffered.
The relationship is not likely to change in the near term due to unflagging Chinese demand; the construction of major Brazilian and South American infrastructure projects aimed at servicing Asia; and the slow pace of economic recovery in the U.S. and Europe.