EYE ON CHINA: Into the Heart of Brazil

Interview with D J Clark

I went to Brazil because it was exactly on the opposite side of the world to China and the purpose of me going was to really find out if China’s influence had penetrated a remote place as far away as this in the same way we knew it had in Europe, America and the countries surrounding China.

I started in Beijing and took a flight to Paris and then from Paris to Rio de Janeiro before travelling up the coast to Recife which is on the North East coast of the Brazil. In Recife I took a car and drove inland for about five days right into the centre of South America. As I got into Tocantins, which was the state I was heading for, I then had another days drive to get to the capital Palmas.

Before I went to Brazil I did a lot of research about the relationship between Tocantins and China and I very quickly established that trade was the most important aspect of that relationship. So when I got to Palmas one of the first things I wanted to do is contact the local trade minister to ask him what it was that linked China so closely to this remote state. Eudoro Pedrozza the Trade and Industry Secretary for Tocantins told me,

“The relationship between Brazil and China and specifically between Tocatins and China is fundamentally important, the world is going through a crisis but this is a great opportunity for China to buy from Tocantins food stuffs. We don’t just want to sell to China but we want China to bring factories to Tocantins. It’s an opportunity for China to occupy the space left by the multinational companies that are frightened of investing at the moment. China has been rediscovered by the world.”

So once I left Palmas one of the first things I wanted to do was to get to one of the big national parks. And I chose Jalapao because it was one of the biggest ones and also because people recommended it. I spent probably three or four days driving through this park as it was enormous and the landscape was fantastic particularly the waterfalls. Numerous, numerous waterfalls, that in any other country, one of them alone would have been a major tourist attraction.

As I drove from Recife to Palmas and also on the return trip which was a slightly different route I stopped at local towns and villages to ask people what they thought about China and I was really surprised. There was obviously an economic incentive for people to trade with China but I also found a lot of people talked about the Olympics and the amazing opening ceremony even in places I didn’t think they would have a TV, they were ecstatic about it.

Video & script: D J Clark & Xu Shu Min

About D J Clark:

D J Clark has worked worldwide as a photojournalist for more than 20 years. He specialises in working with international development NGOs to highlight social, political and environmental issues through long term photography projects. D J Clark researches and writes about photography as a vehicle for social change, the subject that drives both his photographic and academic work. More recently his work has concentrated on Multi Media news production.