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.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      44
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      3 days ago

      China is an authoritarian dictatorship that tramples human rights and treats its citizens like resources and speed-bumps and treats “free speech” as the joke it actually is.

      All that said, they are pulling ahead on the world stage by miles. We don’t see it in the US because again… freedom of speech isn’t real, media is filtered, but if you travel you see whole other angles on the entire planet and just how much we don’t get shown.

      For example, you rarely see news about it, but China has launched 3 space stations in the time it took us to make just the documentaries about the ISS and how huuuuge of an accomplishment it was for the world. They are going to be launching probes and setting up smart, realistic goals for exploring the solar system. That’s just not the kind high-tech, ambitious, modern project that we associate with our stereotypical imagery of China that we get fed here, but if you actually walk around in any of their new cities you will feel a distinct, sinking sensation that we’ve already lost.

      • Jhex@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        2 days ago

        China is an authoritarian dictatorship that tramples human rights and treats its citizens like resources and speed-bumps and treats “free speech” as the joke it actually is.

        if you switched “China” to “The USA” in this sentence, I would have to find details to see if the scale is different but both do exactly the same

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          Yep. There is no government that actually serves the people, governments serve self-preservation and they tend to do heinous shit to succeed at that. We are not an evolved species but really only because we lack the will to be better broadly.

          As individuals we each have vast capacity for learning, caring and understanding the world around us. As a generalized population we are a liquid that flows to the lowest point and erodes everything it touches.

          • Jhex@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 days ago

            I agree… but my point here is that it does not matter it was China who said “x”, in this instance “x” is right and people are dismissing it because “cHiNA” but the reality is that every country, powerful enough, acts pretty much the same so I am attempting to split the source from the message

      • Aljernon@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        Americans still associate China with shit quality merchandise while glossing over that that merchandise is made shit quality because American Importers selected that level of quality and completely ignoring that they make I Phones and other quality tech.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          This is absolutely right and a good point that I think a lot of people really don’t get. China isn’t filled with the cheap shit we get from China, they have a thriving middle-class, they have luxury goods the likes of which westerners haven’t dreamed of. They have quality standards for goods and services probably higher than most places.

          It’s just that since we get their cheap dollar-store merch and we read stories about traditional Chinese medicine, we get the picture here that they’re still largely a backwards, “3rd-world” nation of rice farmers and peasants. It would be like judging the entire US on a sampling of people from the mountains of Appalachia.

          Related, but I also find it hilarious when people reference China as “communist” in any capacity.

      • BoJackHorseman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        3 days ago

        Is bombing other countries, killing civilians and installing puppet leaders not a violation of human rights?

            • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              30
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              3 days ago

              Kay, I’m not chinese or american, so, both the us and china do horrendous things. It’s not a shittiness competition

                • OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  2 days ago

                  I think you’re missing a lot of US History in your knowledge base. The US have committed atrocities for centuries. Are you forgetting the genocide of native americans? Slavery? All the meddling in Latin America and southeast Asia? This is just some of the bigger examples.

                  • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    2 days ago

                    Are you responding to the wrong reply? Bojack is saying bringing up China’s human rights violations in comparison to America bombing people and overthrowing governments all over the world is a false equivalency, and Lemmy is downvoting them because the are correct.

        • rustyfish@piefed.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          Alright. The US acted like crap. Therefore nobody is allowed to criticise China.

          Because of the US, we are not allowed to speak about the Uyghur KZs in China.

          Because of the US, we are not allowed to criticise China for unlawfully occupying Tibet.

          Because of the US, we are not allowed to criticise China for not respecting Taiwans sovereignty.

          Do you understand how hollow you sound?

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        Three what now? Do you mean three modules for one station? Or three consecutive stations, one testing technology for the next? E.g. a short time station, e.g. a crew vehicle? I am only aware of one station, Tiangong. Do I have to do another web search? :(

            • INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 days ago

              He may have meant one space station and some extra moon missions or something? They have been popping off a fair bit.

              Honestly, I don’t care what country dominates and wins the space race, i will just be impressed that we don’t kill each other trying.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          The current monster they have completed in 2022, Tiangong, was the third in a series of stations, the previous Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 stations were mostly meant to test technique and technology but were remarkable achievements in their own right. They currently have the largest and most active space program in the world. I didn’t even touch on their lunar program, their heavy satellite capability and their list of recent and upcoming solar-system probes.

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 days ago
            1. I don’t think monster is an appropriate word for a space station.
            2. so yeah, Tiangong-1 & -2 were single vehicle modules for technology evaluation. Similar to Skylab in concept (single launch, test docking technologies & crewed missions)
            3. as impressive as the Chinese space program is, the ISS is substantially bigger. Sadly, the world has not gotten their shit together in time for a follow-up station, and Gateway is pretty much dead-at-conception.
            • ameancow@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              2 days ago

              Oh the ISS is definitely bigger than anything ever sent to space, as I would expect from an international project that was built by a coalition of countries in better days, but it doesn’t really compare to China’s long-term goals and plans that have been on schedule. China is absolutely dominating space right now and will be into the future unless the US just suddenly gets it shit together and elects people who care about science and exploration, and even then it will take many years or decades now to undo the damage that trumpism has done to the US’s global leadership in space science.

              The ISS is going to be deorbited in 2031, and I am not expecting a bigger, newer project to replace it. At this point I am not expecting to have access to health care broadly in 2031 in the US.

              • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                2 days ago

                No argument there. China definitely has the better and more advanced space program. The ISS might get extended again if it doesn’t break and once people realize there is nothing comparable ready by 2030/31, but yes, eventually, there will be no international nor western space station in orbit for the foreseeable future.

      • Darkness343@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 days ago

        So what if they do a little authoritarianism? They are attempting to make goddamn fusions reactors, for fucks sake

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          edit-2
          3 days ago

          It’s important to point out balancing factors when discussing the accomplishments of any entity or state.

          China is doing amazing things and will likely dominate the coming century, but that doesn’t mean we should look at them like heroes or champions, and we need to hold our leaders accountable for wrongs.

          It’s possible they will get better as they take on more of a global role in the absence of the US hegemony that will likely start to crumble over the next several decades. I hope they give their people more rights and become leaders of world stability, but part of why they’re escaping the destabilizing forces that are crushing democratic countries is precisely because they have such an oppressive stranglehold on their own culture. It’s a complex situation.

        • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          Invasion of Korea lmao. The north had democratic elections, the south had a sham election that resulted in an administration which put people who’d colluded with the japanese back into power, and the US was literally murdering anyone left of Syngman Rhee as a prelude to taking the rest of the peninsula.

          Whatever you think about Korea now, China was absolutely fighting for the liberation of its people.

          The sino-vietnamese war was 25 years later, and a much more legitimate criticism of China’s foreign policy.