Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Wednesday (13) in Beijing, during a meeting with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the strengthening of relations with Venezuela. The Chinese government now considers the Latin American country to be on the same level as Russia or Pakistan.
RFI
“I am very happy to announce, alongside you, the elevation of relations between China and Venezuela to a level of strategic association for any situation,” said Xi, according to images shown on state television. This is the largest scale of Chinese diplomatic relations and only a few countries (Pakistan, Russia, Belarus) receive this kind of treatment.
Beijing maintains close relations with the internationally isolated Maduro government and is one of Venezuela’s main creditors, whose GDP has fallen by 80% in a decade as a result of the economic crisis.
China “will, as always, firmly support Venezuela’s efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, national dignity and social stability, and firmly support Venezuela’s just cause of opposing foreign interference,” Xi told Maduro.
The Venezuelan president is seeking support for his country’s membership of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the group of emerging economies that held its most recent summit in August in Johannesburg, where it announced an expansion with six new countries (Saudi Arabia, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran and Ethiopia). “We could classify the expanded BRICS group as the great engine for accelerating the process of the birth of a new world, a world of cooperation, where the Global South will have the primordial voice,” Maduro said in an interview with the Chinese state news agency Xinhua published on Saturday (9).
China has lent Venezuela almost 50 billion dollars
Maduro was received with his delegation at the People’s Palace, the large building where foreign authorities are received near Tiananmen Square. The Venezuelan head of state arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, after passing through Shanghai and other Chinese cities. The trip began on Friday (8) last week in Shenzhen and will end on Thursday (14).
The visit is a reaffirmation of the “friendship” established under the late former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), who found in China one of his main allies, alongside Russia, Turkey and Iran. Maduro had last visited Beijing in 2018 – his 10th trip to China – when he praised Xi’s vision of a “common destiny for humanity”. Xi Jinping visited Venezuela in 2014.
China lent almost US$50 billion to Venezuela, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in the 2010s. Caracas pays the debt with oil shipments. In 2018, the year in which Maduro won elections that were not recognized by a large part of the international community due to alleged irregularities, the debt exceeded 20 billion dollars.
In 2019, Washington and part of the international community recognized Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader who proclaimed himself interim president. The US president at the time, Donald Trump, imposed sanctions on Caracas. The current Democratic administration of Joe Biden, who succeeded Trump, says it does not recognize Maduro as president and maintains most of the sanctions.
(With information from AFP)