BRAZILIAN President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva was greeted with a 21-gun salute before meeting China’s Xi Jinping in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People today.

The full military honours contrasted with the informal reception given to France’s Emmanuel Macron at the start of the week and emphasised China and Brazil’s stress on “South-South co-operation” between developing countries as a means of challenging the domination of most global institutions by the United States.

Agreements were signed on trade and investment in fields including agriculture and aeronautics, and Mr Xi said the two countries were “comprehensive strategic partners.”

Former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff — Lula’s Workers Party colleague, who was overthrown in a “constitutional coup” in 2016 — has now been signed in as head of the New Development Bank, a Chinese-backed initiative to fund infrastructure projects across the world.

A joint press conference between German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Chinese counterpart Qin Gang was less cosy, with Ms Baerbock distancing Germany from Mr Macron’s suggestion that Europe should not be dragged into a US-China confrontation over Taiwan.

Any attempt to change the status quo in Taiwan by force would be “unacceptable,” she said, while also criticising China’s 12-point peace plan for Ukraine on the grounds that “China has yet to demand of the Russian aggressor that it stop the war,” something that Russian President Vladimir Putin could “do at any time.”

China’s peace plan calls for an immediate ceasefire and respect for the territorial integrity of all countries, but also stresses the need for all countries’ security needs to be acknowledged.

Russia’s invasion last year followed US rejection of de-escalation proposals from Moscow, such as a guarantee that Ukraine would not join Nato and a mutual agreement not to station nuclear weapons in third countries.

Mr Qin retorted that the status quo in Taiwan was under threat from “separatists from the island’s independence movement” backed by “foreign powers.”

China was not supplying weaponry to either side of the Russia-Ukraine war, he added pointedly given Germany’s supply of arms to Ukraine. Nor would it do so in future: “We will not pour oil over the fire,” Mr Qin said.