Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing cannot accept any country acting as the “world’s judge” after the United States captured Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The world’s second-largest economy has provided Venezuela with an economic lifeline since the U.S. and its allies ramped up sanctions in 2017, purchasing roughly $1.6 billion worth of goods in 2024, the most recent full-year data available.
Almost half of China’s purchases were crude oil, customs data shows, while its state-owned oil giants had invested around $4.6 billion in Venezuela by 2018, according to data from the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which tracks Chinese overseas corporate investment.
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’m not going to bang my head against the wall trying to explain it to you. But I’ll give it one more shot.
The fact that you see PPP as only relevant in a bubble inside the country is just idiotic. China PRODUCES things. Literally most of its aid and initiatives are in the form of resources and infrastructure projects. There is no USD involved. That’s literally the entire Belt and Road project.
I’m sorry. But it seems like you’re trying to project what you know about US trade and neoliberal economic policies onto China. You clearly know enough about US trade and how it uses the dollar for dominance on world markets. But China doesn’t have to play that game anymore. That’s literally the shift in global economic trade that has happened. The world is not being held hostage by US dollar dominance anymore. They have an alternative in China.
And PPP is a much better means of showing why this is. It’s BECAUSE China actually makes shit. It’s not just a finance and consumption economy. It makes stuff more affordable for its population AND it’s able to use this same massive industrial power to work on industrial projects with other countries.
You are explaining a world that existed 20-30 years ago.
I think that’s right. To summarize, here’s where I think we agree and disagree:
We agree: GDP is not a particularly good metric for measuring international economic influence.
We disagree: You think adjusting GDP by PPP makes it better for this context, and I think that adjustment makes it even worse.
We agree: Exports matter for discussing economic power on the international stage.
We disagree: I think imports and investment also matter. You clearly don’t, by dismissing them as mere consumption and financial engineering.
We agree: United States economic power overseas is in decline, including in the hegemony of the US Dollar, and its importance/influence through organizations like the World Bank, IMF, WTO, or even things like the SWIFT banking network.
We disagree: I think the United States is still much, much stronger than China on global economic influence. The lines may cross, where China overtakes the United States, but I think that would be in the future, whereas your comment suggests you believe those lines crossed in the past.
In the end, a country like Venezuela wants to sell barrels of oil to buyers, for a good price. That means things like U.S. sanctions (especially when enforced by the entire west) will hurt more than Chinese aid helps. At least as of 2026.
I think the fact that the US invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its leader disproves your last statement. Conditions in Venezuela have actually been improving because of their connections to China. The sanctions were becoming far less effective.
I think that’s what you’re not realizing. The US has given up on soft power because it is losing to China in that. It has moved on to hard power because it can not able to compete with Chinese soft power.