Ep. 16 | How China Sank $60 Billion into Venezuelan Quicksand (and Why) (with Parsifal D'Sola 鹏程)

The State of Venezuela

Over the past two decades, China has become Venezuela's most important economic partner. At one point, Venezuela was the largest recipient of Chinese loans in the whole world, making up more than half of China's loan portfolio at approximately $60 billion. While those loans have long since dried up, and Venezuela still owes China tens of billions of dollars, China remains a key political and economic lifeline for the Maduro regime, importing Venezuelan oil in spite of U.S. sanctions, gifting medical supplies to combat the COVID pandemic, and generally providing quiet but crucial diplomatic support on the international stage.

In this episode we discuss the Venezuela-China relationship. To help us break it all down, we’re joined by Parsifal D’Sola Alvarado. Parsifal is a co-founder and director of the Andrés Bello China-Latin America Research Foundation, a think tank dedicated to the investigation and analysis of Sino-Latin American relations, and serves in his dual capacity as a foreign policy advisor to the interim government of Juan Guaidó.

We discuss China's history in Venezuela and overall strategy of supporting the regime of Nicolás Maduro despite Venezuela's continuing economic devastation.

http://www.twitter.com/pdsola

http://funacionandresbello.org

https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2021/04/09/the-venezuela-china-relations-arent-going-well/

https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2020/07/13/china-turns-the-pandemic-into-an-influence-tool/