Shaun Lawson
two-time Foreign Service reject but I kick ass at this stuff anywayUpdated 2y
Is it true that China is gradually taking over Venezuela and its resources?
I was actually doing a translation job for a regional Chinese government about a year ago, a letter to be sent to a Venezuelan oil company that informed them that they were concerned about Venezuela’s political instability and economic decline, and that they were shifting their oil purchases more towards Iran and the Middle East, though not canceling them entirely. I’m sure this isn’t confidential information; anybody who tracks the oil market is probably aware of this.

They also pulled out of Libya and Yemen when the conflicts there flared up, so this fits their recent international economic policy. Things haven’t gotten that bad yet, but China has other options if they do.

China and Venezuela have made a recent joint venture that will supposedly double Venezuela’s oil output Venezuela to significantly increase oil exports to China but given the recent history of Venezuela’s oil industry, internal politics, and macroeconomy, it’s rather unclear what the follow-through will be. I’d expect progress in this area in the long run (10–20 years), though.

In general, America and the west should not be surprised when parties that we have shunned or disengaged from then go on to partner up with each other.. If you break up with your girlfriend, you don’t get to be upset when she starts dating someone else instead of just remaining sad and alone, eating bulk ice cream in her walk-up. If we don’t engage a given country or region, other people probably will. There’s unipolarity and unilateralism and then there’s just being self-centered.

It’s also worth comparing China’s “takeover” of developing nations in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast and Central Asia to, say, America’s relationship with Panama, Honduras, or any of the Gulf States. When they start building naval bases and either directly organizing coups or training the people who do and then affirming them after the fact, and their major companies start systemically using local thugs to kill union and human rights activists while corporate looks the other way, I’ll start being really worried. There are fringe incidents—the example of the Zambian miners shot by Chinese bosses comes to mind, a tragic, multifaceted, and fascinating story—but they still have a long way to catch up to the American rap sheet in Latin America or Africa, and there are plenty of domestic skeptics of Chinese engagement or even outright sinophobes in most of those countries, so it’s not really worth losing sleep over. If countries feel China is muscling in on them (Vietnam, Malaysia), they’ll let us know. But most of these countries actually benefit somewhat from being able to shop around between the US, China, India, Japan, and the Gulf for different investment, trade, and infrastructure deals, certainly relative to what they’d get under the hegemony of any one of those countries, and are generally happy to play the field whenever possible, the wider the better.

Good couple articles for further reading:

China’s Growing Footprint in Latin America

How to Respond to Chinese Investment in Latin America

The geopolitics of China’s rise in Latin America

China’s investment in Latin America

China and Latin America: A relationship transformed

Beijing's gains in Latin America leave US foreign policy toward China in need of a rethink