Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros began a week long state visit to China on September 8.
Prior to leaving his capital Caracas, the leader of the Bolivarian revolution gave an exclusive interview to China’s Xinhua News Agency. According to Maduro:
“Between China and Venezuela there is a model relationship, it is a model of what should be the relationship between a superpower like China, the great superpower of the 21st century, and an emerging, heroic, revolutionary and socialist country like Venezuela… China has inaugurated a new era of the emergence of non-colonialist, non-imperialist, non-hegemonic superpowers.”
Referring to President Xi Jinping’s concept of building a shared future for humanity, Maduro said: “I believe that the route that President Xi Jinping has proposed is uniting the peoples in all aspects of the economy, trade, culture and is laying the foundations to leave behind the old world of colonialism and imperialism.”
Noting that China provided vaccines to more than 160 countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Venezuelan President continued:
“We have to thank China very much. At the time of the pandemic, if it had not been for China, with the blockade of US imperialism in Venezuela, neither medicines nor sanitary supplies would have arrived, nor the vaccines. Thanks to China, vaccines and medicines arrived, not only to Venezuela, but to more than 160 countries in the world.”
He also expressed Venezuela’s willingness to join the BRICS cooperation mechanism, adding: “The BRICS countries are accelerating the de-dollarisation of the world and the emergence of a new international financial system and a new just economic order, for which humanity has been fighting for years, decades and centuries.”
The interview was originally published by Xinhua in Spanish. We reprint below an English-language translation published by Internationalist 360°.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared that the peoples of China and Venezuela are friends who share “a common destiny in the world to come”, while stressing that both nations are committed to peace, development and cooperation.
“Between China and Venezuela there is a model relationship, it is a model of what should be the relationship between a superpower like China, the great superpower of the 21st century and an emerging, heroic, revolutionary and socialist country like Venezuela,” Maduro emphasized in an exclusive interview with Xinhua before beginning his state visit to China.
Regarding the role played by China in the emergence of a fairer world, the President affirmed that the Asian country “has inaugurated a new era of the emergence of non-colonialist, non-imperialist, non-hegemonic superpowers”.
He also stressed that China, “today, points the way to economic and technological development, social stability and strengthened independence”.
“I believe that the relations between the governments and peoples of China and Venezuela are relations of intimate mutual trust, of true brotherhood, of cooperation for shared development”, said the President.
He also described the bilateral ties as fruitful and stressed that “we mutually nourish each other with great ideas, with great projects”.
The Venezuelan president also expressed his country’s firm support for China’s proposal to build a community of shared destiny for humanity that advances towards “respect for our diversity in the union of a different world, (made up of) all the regions of the world”.
“I believe that the route that President Xi Jinping has proposed is uniting the peoples in all aspects of the economy, trade, culture and is laying the foundations to leave behind the old world of colonialism and imperialism,” he said.
The Venezuelan head of state praised China’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed access to vaccines to more than 160 countries in the world as part of its iconic actions in favor of the peoples.
“We have to thank China very much. At the time of the pandemic, if it had not been for China, with the blockade of U.S. imperialism in Venezuela, neither medicines nor sanitary supplies would have arrived, nor the vaccines. Thanks to China vaccines and medicines arrived, not only to Venezuela, but to more than 160 countries in the world,” he stressed.
Maduro referred to China’s support to the struggle of the South American country against the more than 950 illegal sanctions by the United States against Venezuela.
“I deeply appreciate the courage and firmness of the government of President Xi Jinping and the Chinese people, to accompany Venezuela in denouncing these illegal and criminal sanctions,” he said.
He stressed that, despite the strong attacks by US imperialism, Venezuela “has resisted and has shown that it is capable of recovering from all this onslaught” and “we have been moving forward in the construction of a new economic model based on productive diversification”.
Maduro also highlighted the historic opportunity that the world is currently experiencing, when the possibility of the emergence of a multipolar world without hegemonic countries is a certainty.
He affirmed that, in his opinion, throughout the history of humanity, the world has been characterized by the substitution of one empire for another, of one colonialism for another, “it is now in the 21st century, after so many centuries of struggle of the peoples, that we are seeing on the horizon a humanity without imperialism and colonialism”.
The Venezuelan president pointed out that there are dozens of emerging nations that are helping “humanity to find itself again, to build its right to social happiness, equality, freedom, democracy and China is at the forefront of the construction of this new world.
In this sense, he expressed Venezuela’s willingness to join the BRICS group, a platform that is strengthening “as the great engine for the acceleration of the process of the birth of a new world, a world of cooperation, where the Global South has the primordial voice”.
“The BRICS countries are accelerating the de-dollarization of the world and the emergence of a new international financial system and a new just economic order, for which humanity has been fighting for years, decades and centuries,” he emphasized.
Assuring that Venezuela and China are “united by great feelings”, the Venezuelan president addressed a message to the Chinese people so that “we can build a human homeland, where we can meet, where we can recognize each other and we can walk the path of development, peace and cooperation”.
