Sociologist Anna Jaguaribe, like her father, Sociologist and Political Scientist Hélio Jaguaribe, was a great intellectual and enthusiast about the role of international relations in better projecting Brazil to the world. Thanks to her restless spirit and attentiveness to the challenges of the present and the future, Anna Jaguaribe was one of the first Brazilian intellectuals to point to China's new global protagonism.
She provided an invaluable contribution to the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) as a member of the Board of Trustees since 2017. She created and coordinated CEBRI's Asia Program, which includes the China Analysis Group, planning and organizing courses, publications and high-level discussions with renowned Brazilian and international speakers. Founder of the China Executive Training Program, which CEBRI runs in partnership with China's #1 university, Tsinghua, she coordinated seven editions of the program, which collectively contributed to a better understanding of China's role in geopolitics and expanded the possibilities for Brazil-China cooperation.
In addition, she founded CEBRI’s Multilateralism Program and was responsible for developing CEBRI’s first project in partnership with the Delegation of the European Union to Brazil. Over the past two years, she also coordinated another project of the Multilateralism Program on the challenges to the multilateral system in the new international order. This project was developed in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) and resulted in the publication of a book on the subject at the end of 2020.
Director of the Institute for Brazil-China Studies (IBRACH), sociologist with a doctorate degree from New York University and a postgraduate degree from École Pratique des Hautes Études, Anna lived as a researcher in China from 1998 to 2003. She also worked at the United Nations in New York, was a consultant at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, and a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
Anna Jaguaribe also led the project "Brazilian Foreign Policy and Global Order in Transition: Reorientations of Multilateralism," developed in 2020 by the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The project's objective is to map trends and strategic issues for emerging economies like Brazil in redirecting multilateral policy.
Anna did analyses on the Covid-19 pandemic's impacts on the multilateral system, stating that "Covid-19 demonstrates the resilience of solidarity and human empathy in all affected communities and reaffirms the centrality of science, the importance of scientific institutions, and their global epistemic communities." She was, above all, a renowned expert in analyzing China's global insertion, focusing on the possible impacts of this new dynamic for Brazil, having conducted studies on the subject as part of CEBRI's Asia Program, at the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA), and as Director of the Institute for Brazil-China Studies (IBRACH).
Her contribution was very important to help us better understand China's development and growing international projection, and the new meaning of the country's strategic partnership with Brazil.
"Anna had a deep knowledge of Chinese culture and philosophy. She lived in China in its initial opening phase but never lost contact with the country and with the many friends she made there. She had an insider's view into China's transformations and opened paths in its relationship with Brazil, focusing specifically on technology, connectivity and innovation. It was on these three issues that, in her view, Brazil would stand to make the best out of its interaction with China. While others talked about physical infrastructure, she drew our attention to the digital sphere and was always on the lookout for minds that would help us understand the future. She was unique in combining many facets of diplomatic reflection and she fascinated everyone around her with her mix of energy and softness, her always stimulating reflections, her welcoming way of being and her eyes full of humanity," said Ambassador Marcus Caramuru.
For Pedro Henrique Mariani and Alexandre Lowenkron of the BOCOM BBM Bank, a long-standing partner of CEBRI’s China Analysis Group, "Anna was a great ambassador connecting Brazil with Chinese people, companies and universities, which was seen in the course she organized in partnership with Tsinghua University. She encouraged relationships with knowledge and a great sense of belonging."
Anna was 72 years old, married to Italian diplomat Paolo Bruni, and had no children.
We would like to offer our deepest condolences to the whole family, especially her husband Paolo, her brother Roberto, and sisters Claudia, Beatriz and Izabel.
"China's economic success, which is difficult to replicate, is explained by the constant adjustments, adaptations and institutional innovations that took place throughout the reform process."
"China is not only the new economic powerhouse but also an example of an alternative modernity trajectory to the Euro-Atlantic world.""The uniqueness of the Chinese case comes from multiple factors, including: 1) an alternative founding history, both of the state and of the market, 2) unique international circumstances, and 3) a sharp vision of the future associated with strategic planning."
"Asia's emergence as a global production hub and, above all, China's success in becoming a global manufacturing center, introduce elements of diversity into the system that are not absorbed. Other economic factors also contribute to the regulatory difficulties of the system: the complexity of global trade in production chains, the externalities of technological processes associated with the innovation economy and the digitization of products and services."
