The President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, arrived in China on Friday with the aim of securing financial support from President Xi Jinping’s government ahead of the presidential election. The Chinese Foreign Ministry reported that the president will hold one State visit from September 8th to 14th. A visit that comes while Xi is absent from the Group of Twenty leaders’ summit taking place in India this weekend for the first time since coming to power.
After landing in the flooded southern city of Shenzhen, the Venezuelan dictator posted on X – formerly Twitter – that his “historic” visit was aimed at “strengthening cooperation and building a new world order.” China, in turn, described relations with Venezuela as “rock solid.” “Mutual trust and cooperation in various areas are strengthening,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning, at a regular briefing. According to her, Beijing will seek to “take the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries to a new level and make new contributions to promoting global peace and stability and upholding international equality and justice.”
Likewise, this week the Venezuelan Vice President, Delcy Rodrigueztraveled to Shanghai and Beijing to meet with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yion one of the highest-ranking visits to China in recent years.
In addition to Maduro, Xi will host another heavily indebted country while missing the world’s most important forum for high-level diplomacy. The President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, will land in Beijing and stay there from September 10th to 16th. The symbolism of Xi’s decision to host these two leaders while ignoring the G20 summit sends a powerful message about how he prefers to conduct his diplomacy. And the Chinese president is hosting more and more dignitaries on his own territory or reaching out to groups where he has more influence, such as the recently expanded BRICS countries.
This weekend, the meeting between Xi and Maduro will focus on energy investment and cooperation. The Venezuelan government wants to generate more money from the country’s enormous oil wealth as it looks set to run for a third term as president next year. Venezuela has the largest crude oil reserves in the world and oil accounts for about 95% of the country’s foreign revenue. In recent years, however, mismanagement, corruption and US sanctions have eroded its advantages.
Amid growing rivalry between the United States and China in the region, Beijing and Caracas continue to expand their ties. The visit takes place at a time when the administration of Joe Biden is trying to start talks with the Venezuelan authorities to lift sanctions and in return allow fair elections next year.
However, the Caribbean country’s oil ministry has been working closely with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) officials on a new pipeline that would eliminate middlemen and allow them to transport crude oil directly, Minister Tellechea said in May. Currently CNPC is producing 80,000 barrels per day, half of what was produced in 2015according to Bloomberg.
According to the Kpler company, China imported about 283 million barrels of crude oil from the country last year, or about 38.8 million tons, despite US sanctions on Venezuelan oil. Venezuelan shipments are mostly transported via third countries, including Malaysia. Yet China has not recorded crude oil imports from Venezuela in official customs data either last year or this year.
The state-owned company PetroChina, together with the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, has a 40% stake in the Sinovensa project in the Orinoco belt. This company stopped transporting Venezuelan crude in August 2019 after the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the South American exporter.
Additionally, Venezuelans are heavily indebted to the Asian giant after then-President Hugo Chávez agreed a $50 billion oil-for-credit deal in 2007. In 2020, the Maduro government and Chinese banks agreed on a grace period for around $19 billion of that debt, according to Reuters.
