The Chinese sphere of global influence continues to grow, including into the United States’ backyard in Latin America.
China is cementing ties with what has up until now served as its beachhead into the region: Venezuela.
During an online meeting held by the Chinese Communist Party on Wednesday, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro said he will work with Beijing toward the creation of an “alternative to capitalism.”
The event was titled “High-Level Dialogue with the Communist Party of China and Political Parties of the World.” It was hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping himself, and also participating were Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Le Hoai Trung — who leads the Foreign Relations Commission of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
That South Africa’s president was present is not surprising. The country’s ruling party, the African National Congress, is a “social-democratic” organization which has recently been making open displays of its closeness to Beijing, such as with the recent naval drills conducted with China and Russia.
During Wednesday’s virtual meeting, Maduro said China has “all the support” of Venezuela for the purpose of creating a “developed and egalitarian world, far from capitalist ideas.”
“I send you all our commitment in the work and in the daily struggle to build, as we are building, an alternative to savage capitalism, to neoliberal capitalism, to imperialist hegemonism. An independent, sovereign alternative,” said Maduro.
“You can count on the full support of Venezuela, of our people and of the United Socialist Party in the endeavor to build a civilization where we all fit, where we take the path of development,” the Venezuelan dictator continued, adding that his regime and China’s will together form “a new civilization of peace, harmony, union, of shared destinies.”
This new order, led by China, will ostensibly run parallel to U.S. hegemony, allowing member states to run their countries as they wish without fear of economic punishment or even military-driven regime change.
Maduro, whose regime has been repeatedly hit with Western sanctions, spoke specifically about the prospect of being free from American sanctions, speaking of the need “to create alternative models to hegemony, to economic blackmail, to the attempt to impose through coercion, the blackmail of aggression, to impose their domination on our people.”
Ironically, Maduro declared that the “times of empires are over,” even though his ally, China, is in the process of building an empire of its own, with imperial ambitions in Tibet, the South China Sea, and other regions.
In fact, the partnership in which Maduro is so happy to enter into with China is part of that Chinese imperial ambition, as Beijing hopes to create satellite nations in Latin America, just as it is striving to do on every continent.
“[This] was born as a social and political force, in the heat of the struggle against North American imperialism and its obsession to hegemonize and dominate our America,” Maduro said in praise of China’s work against the “imperialism” of the United States. “It was born in the heat of the struggle to build in our homeland our own economic, social and political model of socialism in the 21st century.”
Argentina is another key state China is working on to bring into its orbit.
As Breitbart News reported, Argentina’s embassy to China recently said Buenos Aires is considering the purchase of JF-17 “Thunder” fighter jets from Beijing.
A social media post from the embassy revealed that Ambassador Sabino Vaca Narvaja and Argentine Defense Minister Jorge Taiana are in the process of working out a defense integration with China that would prospectively include buying Chinese military vehicles and fighter jets, and even engaging in a exchanges of military personnel with Beijing.
According to China’s Global Times, the deal may not be official yet, but it is ready to go. The outlet claims that part of the appeal for Argentina is the fact that China gives Argentina its support for the “legitimate claim to exercise full sovereignty over the Malvinas [Falkland] Islands.”
Argentina and the United Kingdom both claim the Falklands, a dispute that led Argentina to invade them in the brief Falklands War in 1982, during which Argentina suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the British that has been a blight on its national pride ever since.
Additionally, the Global Times asserts, the Chinese warplanes are less expensive than the alternatives and will give Buenos Aires “very advanced systems including an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, a combination of China’s top beyond-visual-range and short-range missiles, as well as avionics and flight control systems.”
These developments are certainly alarming. Not only is China creeping into the Western Hemisphere and getting dangerously close to boxing in the United States, but it is demonstrating shrewdness in its dealings:
Venezuela’s petroleum reserves make it a useful ally for Beijing, while Argentina’s high standard of living and civil order relative to other Latin American countries, combined with its strong sense of national pride, provide it with the potential to become a strong military power in the region — one that would be acting on China’s behalf.
