VENEZUELA TOOK control at the weekend of a Chinese-built communications satellite, part of a deepening trade relationship that some say illustrates waning US influence in Latin America.
Accompanied by Chinese technicians at a communications facility in western Guarico state, President Hugo Chávez presided at a ceremony in which Venezuela formally assumed operation of the Simon Bolivar, a $400 million satellite that China launched on October 29th.
“This will put an end to media terrorism and help us spread our own truth, to wage the battle of ideas with efficiency and transparency,” Mr Chávez said on national television .
Mr Chávez said the satellite would strengthen his nation’s sovereignty by overcoming US “media bombardment”. The satellite will also bring the internet to schools and homes across Venezuela and facilitate “tele-medicine” – sending medical tests of patients in remote locations via the internet to urban medical centres for speedier diagnoses.
Also this month, Venezuela is taking possession from China of 18 military jet training aircraft that can be refitted for combat and a missile defence radar system. It has also begun to receive 27 oil drilling platforms and a fleet of oil tankers it ordered from China.
China now buys on average 338,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil daily, a figure that could rise to 1 million per day by 2012, Mr Chávez has said. Venezuela effectively subsidises those sales by paying freight costs to China.
Chávez critic and former foreign minister Simon Alberto Consalvi said the burgeoning trade relationship had mostly benefited China, and that the recent decline in oil prices might force Mr Chávez to curtail his spending.
China has also committed to investing billions in a heavy oil development project in eastern Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt, where several US and European oil companies were expelled after refusing to cede control of projects to the state oil company PDVSA.
Looking to secure long-term access to oil and other minerals, China has signed 21 such energy deals around the world. It has also committed $4 billion to finance social development projects in Venezuela, including railroads, housing, roads and schools. – ( LA Times/Washington Post service)