Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 19, 2023

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

Ideology matters in the Chinese-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) Moon coalition, with China agreeing to take an astronaut to the Moon from member dictatorship Venezuela, and with the Sept. 1 admission of South Africa, a leftist pro-China state which in 2024 will see 30 years of one-party rule.

In July 2023 Venezuela became the first Latin American country to join the ILRS, with Venezuela and China having been space partners since China built and launched Venezuela’s first resource monitoring satellite in 2008.

From 2007 to 2017 China provided Venezuela with more than $60 billion in financing, or about 40 percent of its total financing/loans to Latin America and Venezuela has purchased modern Chinese weapons like the ZBD04 amphibious assault vehicle.

Chinese-built Norinco VN-4 armored cars were instrumental in enabling President Nicolas Maduro to suppress massive anti-government riots in 2014.

During the Sept. 8-14 state visit by Maduro, his first meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping in five years, the leaders elevated their relationship to an “all weather strategic partnership,” or for China the elite level of “strategic partnerships.”

During Maduro’s Sept. 13 visit to the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a major designer of China’s space launch vehicles, space stations and Moon related vehicles, and later that day stated, “Very soon, Venezuelan youth will come to prepare as astronauts here in Chinese schools.”

Maduro also stated that a new Venezuela-China committee on scientific, technological, industrial and aerospace cooperation, “sooner rather than later take the first Venezuelan man or woman to the moon on board a Chinese spacecraft.”

A joint statement noted, “Both nations highly appreciate the signing of a framework agreement on space cooperation, and are willing to work together to promote joint satellite and lunar and deep space missions.”

Given that Venezuela remains highly dependent on Chinese financial support and direct assistance, it is likely that China will also be funding Venezuela’s participation in the ILRS and the trips made by Venezuelan astronauts.

For Maduro, China is giving the gift of false political achievement that can be used to displace news about his parlous government and to justify his dictatorship over the people of Venezuela.

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  Dictators club and China’s Moon coalition