After years of drifting away from Beijing, Maduro is strengthening ties with China as he seeks to revive Venezuela’s crumbling economy and oil industry.
The visit comes as Venezuela is also in continued talks with the United States, which is exploring the possibility of lifting some oil sanctions against Venezuela as long as Maduro promises to hold free and fair presidential elections next year.Maduro’s far-fetched pledge to send his citizens to the moon comes as Venezuelans continue to flee the political, economic and social crises in their country, adding to an exodus that has now surpassed 7 million, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
“Maduro is not able to feed his own people, much less get a Venezuelan on the moon,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow for the Atlantic Council. The lunar aspirations are a “little ridiculous,” he said, but come at a time when Maduro is “desperate to broadcast an image of himself as a successful statesman.”
China has become increasingly influential in Latin America in recent years, and has been an important lender to Venezuela since the years of socialist President Hugo Chávez. Venezuela is Latin America’s biggest borrower from China, with worth of Chinese state loans. On Wednesday, China announced that it was upgrading its relationship to an “all-weather strategic partnership,” a label suggesting the ties between the two countries will hold regardless of changes in the external environment.launched a lunar mission this month in an attempt to become the fifth nation to land on the moon, just weeks after India successfully landed a robotic spacecraft near the south pole.
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