Venezuela Makes China Nervous

It's well known how much China has been spending in the developing world in recent years. But it's getting burned badly in Venezuela, which is leading it to rethink its free-spending ways elsewhere.

"What we learned from the Venezuelan case is that China should be more cautious and sophisticated about its overseas lending and investment," said Xue Li, director of international strategy at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences's Institute of World Economics and Politics. "Compared to Latin America, Africa holds greater strategic significance for China and there'd be more at stake if things go wrong."

Now, remember that in Latin America, China has been seen as a positive force because unlike the United States it does not attach economic strings to its loans. Well, Venezuela has screwed that up too.

Facing such pressures, China has begun to demand greater financial transparency and responsibility from recipient nations, said Lin Boqiang, the director of Xiamen University's energy economics research center and an adviser to the National Energy Administration of China. The message is that China's shouldn't squander the world's largest stockpile of foreign reserves.

The party, it seems, may be ending because of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.