Luckin is buying coffee beans, Meituan is sending teams to map the streets—and BYD is rolling out electric buses across São Paulo.
Amidst uncertain times, one thing seems to be sure – Chinese tech giants have their eye on Brazil. In this episode, we talk about why everyone in China’s consumer scene suddenly seems to have their eyes on Brazil. From TikTok Shop to Meituan, and from local competition to cultural adaptation, we dive into what’s driving this strategic push and whether it’s built to last.
But beyond business strategy, we also unpack the deeper context: the increasingly close relationship between China and Brazil’s governments, Lula’s seemingly increasing popularity, and what this might mean for both countries.
Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast
Featured materials:
Meituan’s US$1B investment into Brazil, what’s on the table?, The Low Down
China’s Didi enters Brazil’s food delivery market, The Low Down
China’s Didi and Meituan clash in Brazil’s food delivery market| The Impulso Podcast E114
[AI-generated Transcript]
[00:00:00] Jianggan: I remember in 2014 when I was in Sao Paulo and I was talking to, I think about four friends separately who used to work in Asia, and I asked all four of them, what do you miss the most about Asia? The answer was very consistent. Bubble tea.
[00:00:15] Sabrina: really?
[00:00:16] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:00:22] Sabrina: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Impulso Podcast by Momentum Works. On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about Brazil. We have a special guest joining us. We have Kyle. So Kyle writes a lot of the articles for us on the lowdown blog, which is why we’ve invited him today to share a little bit of his perspectives on today’s topic, which is Brazil.
[00:00:43] Sabrina: And why everyone is going to Brazil, right? So TikTok shop recently launched in Brazil this month, may and earlier this year, cd, which is one of the largest ride-hailing company in China, who has been operating in Brazil as well recently reentered food delivery in Brazil. So they were there previously.
[00:01:00] Sabrina: And then. It didn’t really work out for them. They exited.
[00:01:03] Jianggan: They exited for delivery, but they kept the fleet. The fleet became interesting. I think internally they mentioned they have like 700,000 rider or something, so two wheelers that have been using that for mobility and now it’s just a workforce ready if they want to do food delivery.
[00:01:16] Sabrina: If you guys are interested, we did a more in-depth podcast on that. That’ll be linked in the show notes below one of the. Points you mentioned during the podcast with Didi actually, was that the reason why they were sort of reentering food delivery in Brazil during this time was kind of to stay ahead of Meituan,
[00:01:31] Jianggan: which is another Chinese company.
[00:01:32] Jianggan: Yes.
[00:01:32] Sabrina: Which is the largest food delivery company in China. Yeah. They has been expanding pretty rapidly overseas. They’re
[00:01:38] Jianggan: expanding to UAE Kuwait and the other GCC countries, but Brazil is new.
[00:01:42] Sabrina: They also announced recently that they are gonna be entering Brazil.
[00:01:45] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:01:45] Sabrina: And they pledge to invest about, I think about one US 1 billion, and then of course.
[00:01:50] Sabrina: A very big bubble tea store.mixue, who is the largest f and b chain in the world by a number of stores, also announced that they would be opening in Brazil and not just opening stores in Brazil, but they’re actually planning to open some factories there as well, right?
[00:02:05] Jianggan: Yes. And, uh, of course, Brazil is, is it the largest coffee producer in the world, and Chinese players buy a lot of coffee from Brazil.
[00:02:13] Jianggan: Luckin did a, a huge pledge, but I think they were meeting the, the vice president of Brazil in China last year. The funny thing is that I used to work a lot with Brazilians, and I remember in 2014 when I was in Sao Paulo and I was talking to, I think about four friends separately who used to work in Asia, and I asked all four of them, what do you miss the most about Asia?
[00:02:33] Jianggan: The answer was very consistent. Bubble tea.
[00:02:36] Sabrina: Oh, really?
[00:02:38] Jianggan: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:39] Sabrina: So I think then that’s the question, right? So why is everyone, or why are all these Chinese companies going to Brazil now?
[00:02:47] Jianggan: Yeah. Kyle, what do you think?
[00:02:48] Kyle: So I think that’s due to the very friendly political environment because at Brazil is very friendly to China for a long time, since the election of Lula as president.
[00:02:58] Kyle: Lula is also very friendly to China and a lot of Chinese people, they love Lula because Lula’s roots as a worker. Yeah.
[00:03:05] Jianggan: Roots as a worker.
[00:03:06] Kyle: Yeah. Lula was born in a very poor family. Okay. And Lula even lose his finger among
[00:03:12] Jianggan: working so. So people like his story as somebody who came from poor background and fought his way up.
[00:03:17] Jianggan: Right. Rather someone who is like born privilege and stuff. Right?
[00:03:20] Kyle: Yeah. People love underdogs.
[00:03:22] Jianggan: Yeah. People love underdogs. Yes. Yeah. So
[00:03:24] Sabrina: I think, yeah, they have a good relationship. And then Lula also recently went to China, right? Yes. It was
his
[00:03:30] Sabrina: fourth visit to China. It was in May.
[00:03:34] Jianggan: Just a couple days ago, and I was in Beijing at the same time.
[00:03:37] Jianggan: At the same time. No, I was, I was asking the executives or some of these companies as saying that, Hey, why, why is everyone going to Brazil now? And, and what, what answer I kept getting is that we have good relations. We have good relations. Ask Kyle said, right, because. You know, you know, international, there’s, there’s quite a bit of backlash against quite a bit of suspicion against many of the, the Chinese giants and, and if you look at midterm trajectory, going to Saudi Arabia, going to Brazil, these are countries which are friendly.
[00:04:05] Sabrina: So there’s a much more friendly business environment for them to work, which I guess makes it easier as well. And I think, ’cause a lot of this is because of better political relationships, right? So for example, when Lula was in China recently, I think they had a ceremony where they signed a lot of MOUs and like agreements amongst companies.
[00:04:21] Sabrina: So there’s this photo, yes. Very cute. This is after they signed the,
[00:04:26] Jianggan: yeah, for you, I think. I think the MOUs are still on the desk,
[00:04:30] Sabrina: but then also on the desk, if you can see this, the little like me
[00:04:35] Jianggan: Yeah. And
[00:04:36] Sabrina: that’s also, this is the Kangaroo
[00:04:40] Jianggan: So the information we have is that, okay, their plan is to expand into the other part of GCC from from Saudi Arabia, and then gradually move to other markets.
[00:04:50] Jianggan: So, so Brazil was accelerated. I think this. Visit from Lula and the potential of signing a deal and a lot of, you know, sort of talkings in the back end and probably contribute largely to this decision.
[00:05:02] Sabrina: And it’s not just, um, political relationship. Right. So I think there’s this very interesting chat from the economists
[00:05:08] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:05:08] Sabrina: Where they kind of show like the perception of the citizens from these Latin America countries of China. And it’s actually quite interesting ’cause most of them actually have a pretty good perception.
[00:05:21] Jianggan: I was, I was actually quite, quite kind of shocked to look at this. I mean, also, this is kind of understandable, right?
[00:05:27] Jianggan: If you look at this, so, which country and do we, do we believe China, US respect Latin American countries? And that, that was the question asked, right? I, I think there’s something happening with Columbia, right? Because when Trump first came to, in, into office, he kind of forced Colombia to take over some prisoners or something and there was a big, big incident and which made the Colombians very unhappy.
[00:05:48] Jianggan: Mm-hmm. Venezuela. I mean, we all know what’s happening in Venezuela, so, so Brazil, Argentina, I mean, you see this consistency, right? I mean, people in in South America generally think that China respect them more. And of course, I would expect this to be mutual, right?
[00:06:02] Sabrina: And I think, of course, this also makes it easier for businesses going into.
[00:06:06] Sabrina: Latin American countries, right? Because obviously if the people have more respect for you or they have a preference for you, they would be more willing to use your services as prior, as well.
[00:06:14] Jianggan: Yeah. It’s also interesting, I think, I think Kyle went with me to, to these meetings with Brazilian and the Mexican executives there.
[00:06:20] Jianggan: Yes. About two months ago,
[00:06:22] Kyle: right?
[00:06:22] Jianggan: Yeah. So you, you can see that the Brazilian executives are much more friendly towards Chinese companies compared to the Mexicans.
[00:06:30] Kyle: I mean, like Mexicans, maybe they are like very closer to the US so they have. Deeper like cooperation with the US and for Brazil I think ’cause us feel a bit detached.
[00:06:41] Kyle: So they think like China is like one of their members communes in the global south, but Mexicans do not feel so, yeah,
[00:06:48] Jianggan: Brazil is literally in the south. Yeah.
[00:06:50] Sabrina: I guess it also helps that now they’ve kind of extended like visa free travel from China to Brazil. Mm-hmm. So that also makes it a lot easier for.
[00:06:59] Sabrina: Business
[00:07:00] Jianggan: it’s a Chinese businesses to go there. Right. It it’s much, much easier because since like a, a year ago, there are lots of Chinese business people were asking us, Hey, can we organize immersion to Brazil? Mm-hmm. We’re a bit overstretched. So, so of, of course, one concern for people to not be able to commit very quickly is the, is the Visa requirements.
[00:07:17] Jianggan: Right. You need to plan, we’re ahead. Yeah.
[00:07:19] Sabrina: Visa, it’s a very big problem when traveling. I have realized that.
[00:07:22] Jianggan: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:23] Sabrina: So that’s what we talk about, like China and Brazil having a good relation now.
Mm-hmm.
[00:07:27] Sabrina: I would say they’ve had pretty good relationship for quite a while, right? I mean, yeah. They trade a lot with each other.
[00:07:31] Sabrina: Mm-hmm. So,
[00:07:34] Jianggan: yes, I think
[00:07:35] Sabrina: China is one of the top.
[00:07:36] Jianggan: It is the top, it is the top export, export
[00:07:39] Sabrina: destinations for quite a lot of Latin American countries. So for example, in the chart here,
[00:07:47] Jianggan: Brazil, I export like 30% of their, their total
[00:07:50] Sabrina: do they export to China.
[00:07:51] Kyle: Okay. Okay. So generally they export a lot of things like agriculture products to China, soybeans, China face, a lot of pressure from US on things like soybeans and corn.
[00:08:01] Kyle: Also, they will export something like minerals, which are pretty like required by Chinese manufacturers. Yeah,
[00:08:07] Sabrina: so a lot of raw materials and ingredients, right? Yes. Like agricultural products. Yes, yes, yes. You,
[00:08:13] Jianggan: you make lots of tofu in China.
[00:08:15] Sabrina: You need, yeah, you need soybean to make tofu. What do you need to make tofu?
[00:08:19] Jianggan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so, so soybeans is, is, is super important. Uh, and of course you have tofu, your soy sauce, which are integral to Chinese cuisine. But, but more importantly is, is feed, right? It’s feed to all the animal stocks. I think if you look at the, look at trade, right? I mean, before, before, before 2000, and the trade between Brazil and China, even, even, even before like 2002, right?
[00:08:41] Jianggan: It was, it was paid like two, $3 billion and fast forward to 20, 20, 25, it’s already like more than a hundred billion dollars. Just Brazil’s export to China and, and China exports to Brazil. I think lots of like electronic equipment, et cetera, et cetera. It’s actually a smaller scale, so Brazil run [00:09:00] large hedge sub surplus, yeah.
[00:09:01] Jianggan: Towards China and also China buys jets from Brazil.
[00:09:04] Sabrina: Commercial jets, right? Commercial jets, yeah. What, what’s the name of the Embraer? Embraer that we did not know this beforehand.
[00:09:14] Kyle: Yeah, yeah. But then how would we know what commercial Jet or remember? Like Boeing and Airbus. Airbus. But we don’t, that’s
[00:09:20] Jianggan: the third largest player.
[00:09:21] Jianggan: That’s the largest player. I, I’m, I’m sure you have flown on a, I
[00:09:25] Sabrina: dunno if I’ve flown on a ERJ jet,
[00:09:27] Jianggan: like a small regional jet.
[00:09:28] Sabrina: What airlines use it? What airline? Good.
[00:09:33] Jianggan: Scoot is a, is the low cost subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. Yeah, Sabrina only fly Singapore Airlines.
[00:09:38] Sabrina: Oh no. I fly airlines. I fly scoot.
[00:09:41] Jianggan: See?
[00:09:41] Jianggan: Which also part of Singapore Airlines, and I think recently there are lots of cars, right? I mean, many, many Chinese car manufacturers are going to Brazil and, and amazingly, there is no backlash. Why
[00:09:51] Sabrina: for Chinese death? Was that not a backlash when I do think there’s a lot of backlash when China was, I do think there’s a lot of backlash when China is trying to export their cars to like maybe the US or Europe.
[00:10:03] Sabrina: Right. Just essentially like safety concerns.
[00:10:05] Jianggan: Is that really safety concerns?
[00:10:07] Sabrina: No. That’s what people say.
[00:10:08] Jianggan: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:09] Sabrina: But safety concern is just a good like excuse to use, excuse, you know? Anything can be a safety concern. I.
[00:10:14] Jianggan: The issue for Brazil is that Brazil has a lot of car manufacturing plants, right? But it doesn’t have like a very strong domestic car brand.
[00:10:21] Jianggan: Historically, it was the, I mean, American brands, European brands and Korean brands going to Brazil, right? In a sense, they don’t really have a local brand, local champion to, to protect, and the market needs cars. I mean, whoever who can come with the better cars, whoever who can come and provide. Employment to all these manufacturing workers?
[00:10:39] Jianggan: I think, I think they’re will come. So Brazil is a large market. I think whichever Chinese player who wants to go, they will probably make some concession and start manufacturing there.
[00:10:47] Sabrina: And of course like we know there are a lot of Chinese car brands now, right? A lot of their own homegrown brands. A lot of them are, and it’s quite cute ’cause So when Lula was in China recently, there was actually a video of him
[00:10:59] Jianggan: visiting a car factory
[00:11:00] Jianggan: Great war model. Yeah. So
[00:11:02] Sabrina: they kind of just brought him around to like see the car.
[00:11:04] Jianggan: Yes.
[00:11:06] Sabrina: Also side note, I wanna say that I think Chinese cars are like hella, and I would love a Chinese car. Like they have everything. Like, look at the fridge on this car, how many bottles of waters you can feed there. Or like food.
[00:11:18] Jianggan: I think I can recognize the brand of this water. Yeah. But anyway, so
[00:11:21] Sabrina: it’s the, it’s the most popular brand in China. Right? The red color can
[00:11:25] Jianggan: also play this video of got to the driving seat. The first thing we try to is, is, is to sw because. That that made the general manager of this company’s like laugh, right?
[00:11:36] Jianggan: The
[00:11:36] Sabrina: first thing he made in the account, he just died.
[00:11:38] Jianggan: I was looking at this video being published on social media in China and. Most of the comments are, are trying to guess the accent of the, the boss of this car company saying, Hey, which town is he from? Which province and stuff. Yeah. I mean it’s generally an interesting sort of friendly sort of banter.
[00:11:53] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:11:53] Sabrina: But like, yeah, so we were looking through throwing earlier and there were actually a lot of remix of this video.
[00:11:58] Jianggan: Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:59] Sabrina: Of him just solving the car around. Right. So that’s like just people editing. So I guess it shows that the Chinese public also does have a pretty positive perception of Brazil and like Lula as a president.
[00:12:11] Kyle: Yeah, so I think that maybe that because of like the last plays on Chinese football watch during his spare time and at first as a football war, I feel quite dubious like why he watch Chinese football when he has brought he the kingdom of football, Brazil. Oh my goodness.
[00:12:25] Jianggan: In a way it’s the, it touches a topic in the interesting way, right?
[00:12:28] Jianggan: Because at first there lots of football fans in China, and second, everyone has. The way the football is played out in China, because
[00:12:37] Sabrina: how many people, how many Chinese people watch Chinese football?
[00:12:39] Jianggan: A lot. A lot. A lot. Yes. A lot. A lot, they generally feel disappointed about the performance of Chinese’s football team and they hope that the team would perform better, so, so having someone from Brazil, which is of course the traditional stronghold for football, saying that, Hey, I care about your football as well.
[00:12:55] Jianggan: I think that sends a, a strong residency message to the audience in China.
[00:12:59] Sabrina: Obviously we can see that China and Brazil have a really good relationship now. Right. And of course this means a lot of Chinese businesses are kind of looking at Brazil as another market that they can enter. That’s a lot more.
[00:13:11] Sabrina: Business friendly for them. Mm-hmm. Of course, with like the visa and of course better, I guess having a better perception in the Brazilian people’s mind, how do you think this dynamics will evolve?
[00:13:22] Jianggan: I think, I think all these companies go to Brazil. I spoke with some friends who have been with a large China tech companies working in Brazil in the past, and they were saying that generally it takes like some time for you to figure out a rhythm to work together, but when the mutual perception is positive, it’s much easier for you to get over differences and try to find a way to work together.
[00:13:41] Jianggan: So hope that that kind of good work can carry forward. And also, I think all these companies now, they have learned from the lessons of previous generation of companies going out, right? I mean, now they’re much more respectful to basically a different environment and the different cultural, the different culture and, and try to find a way to work together.
[00:13:57] Jianggan: I mean, keeping a strong core, which is take data, et cetera. From China, but, but try to work out, I mean, how to work well with the, with the local managers, local team and local ecosystem. Mm. Let’s see how that goes. I think globally we see the, the dynamics are shifting, right? The Brix countries, Brazil, Russia, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
[00:14:16] Jianggan: Yes, they are. They seem to bond better together now with Trump in office, there’s some shift in global dynamics and, and of course the Briggs, the five countries plus all these like new members, they adopt that. They have a very different systems, they have a very different cultures. Yes, but, but I think there are some real political calculations which hold them together and which also mm.
[00:14:40] Jianggan: Translate into how the message they send domestically and the mutual perception, the respect that we talked about in this podcast. So for our point of view, I think it’s interesting to see how, how the Chinese companies under this large companies will perform in, in a country which is in a global south, whose institutions are more western.
[00:14:57] Jianggan: Right. I mean, and, and who are like large middle incomes, et cetera, et cetera. I, I think it’ll be interesting to see in the next few years and, and certainly we hope that people can see some opportunities created by this wave of cooperation.
[00:15:11] Sabrina: Perfect. So thank you guys for tuning into another episode of the Apostle Podcast.
[00:15:14] Sabrina: We hope that you guys enjoyed today’s episode, and if you did, do like this video as well. Subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on the latest happenings and trends in tech, new retail, and the broader digital economy. Thank you and bye-bye
[00:15:27] Jianggan: bye.
The post Why is EVERY Chinese company going to Brazil?| Impulso E119 first appeared on The Low Down - Momentum Works.
