{"id":16413,"date":"2026-01-28T04:14:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T04:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=16413"},"modified":"2026-01-28T04:14:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T04:14:28","slug":"can-venezuelas-delcy-rodriguez-become-a-latin-american-deng-xiaoping-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=16413","title":{"rendered":"Can Venezuela\u2019s Delcy Rodr\u00edguez become a Latin American Deng Xiaoping? | Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A<\/span>fter years of political and social upheaval, hunger and despair, the Great Helmsman departs and is replaced by a francophile economic reformer who catapults a traumatised country into a new era of prosperity and growth.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is what happened in China half a century ago when the croissant-loving communist<\/a> Deng Xiaoping became paramount leader after Chairman Mao Zedong\u2019s 1976 death and set in motion one of history\u2019s biggest economic booms.<\/p>\n

Some believe it might also turn out to be an apt description of the situation in today\u2019s Venezuela after its \u201cGran Timonel\u201d<\/a>, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, was toppled and replaced by his Sorbonne-educated vice-president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n

In her first address after filling the dictator\u2019s shoes, Rodr\u00edguez hinted at plans to launch her own period of \u201creform and opening up\u201d \u2013 just as Deng did after a heart attack ended Mao\u2019s life and his catastrophic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, and vice-president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, hold a meeting with China\u2019s President Xi Jinping (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, in 2023.<\/span> Photograph: Miraflores Palace\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhere Chavismo has had to rectify [itself], it does so,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez said in a speech with echoes of Deng\u2019s 1978 plea for Chinese communists to \u201cemancipate their minds\u201d after that decade of bloodshed and upheaval<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Declaring the start of a \u201cnew chapter\u201d in Venezuela<\/a>, Rodr\u00edguez called for revamped oil laws to help foreign firms access the world\u2019s largest proven reserves and pledged closer ties with Washington, despite its \u201ckidnapping\u201d of Maduro.<\/p>\n

\u201cVenezuela has the right to relations with China<\/a>, with Russia, with Cuba, with Iran \u2026 and with the United States,\u201d said Maduro\u2019s substitute, who some have started calling \u201cDelxiaoping\u201d.<\/p>\n

Critics see efforts to portray Rodr\u00edguez as a Latina Deng<\/a> as a spin campaign to obscure her role in helping Maduro wreck Venezuela\u2019s democracy and her responsibility for the feared intelligence agency, Sebin, while vice-president.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>They\u2019re trying to make her more palatable. Delcy is now going through a face wash,\u201d <\/em>said Andr\u00e9s Izarra, an exiled former minister under Maduro and his mentor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n

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But sinologists say they understand why leaders of the United Socialist party of Venezuela might look to the Communist party of China for inspiration as they seek to leave behind years of social and economic chaos \u2013 without losing political control.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Deng Xiaoping reform era is a very interesting model for Venezuela,\u201d said Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross director of the Center on US-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. \u201cThey need to open up to the outside world and get the economy going \u2026 If she [Rodr\u00edguez] has brains, she will economically reform because, my God, she\u2019s got to get their oil industry back pumping and irrigating her government with some funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s interim leader is soon expected to make an official visit to the US \u2013 the first by a Venezuelan president in more than 25 years \u2013 although it seems unlikely she will appear at a Texas rodeo sporting a 10-gallon cowboy hat,<\/a> as Deng did in 1979 to signal Beijing\u2019s desire to engage with the world.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Deng Xiaoping wears a cowboy hat at a rodeo in Texas when visiting the US in 1979.<\/span> Photograph: Bettmann\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But China\u2019s authoritarian experience suggests anyone expecting a political thaw to accompany economic reform in Venezuela will be bitterly disappointed.<\/p>\n

Schell recalled how Deng briefly <\/strong>flirted with political reforms in the 80s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were village elections \u2013 even some higher-level county elections were allowed \u2026 Publishing bloomed. Media suddenly opened up. Universities were much freer and there was almost nothing you couldn\u2019t talk about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But deep down, Deng remained wedded to his \u201cfour cardinal principles\u201d philosophy that insisted the party\u2019s \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat\u201d could not be challenged. \u201cThe fundamental structure of the polity did not change,\u201d Schell said.<\/p>\n

Any hope of democratic change evaporated in June 1989 when Deng ordered troops to clear protesters from Tiananmen Square<\/a>. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed.<\/p>\n

Schell also said he suspected Venezuela\u2019s current leaders would be reluctant to cede power and predicted Rodr\u00edguez \u2013 who didn\u2019t seem \u201ca Jeffersonian Democrat\u201d \u2013 would \u201cgo very cautiously\u201d <\/em>when it came to political reform. \u201cThey are the elite, and they do not want to give up their privileges \u2026 a bit like the Chinese Communist party. They did not want to give up theirs either and migrate into a multiparty [system], where they had to actually compete politically.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVenezuela is not China, but autocracies do have some common chords,\u201d Schell added.<\/p>\n

Maduro\u2019s heirs have shown clear signs of wanting to follow in the footsteps of Deng, whose economic pragmatism was captured by the phrase: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long before Maduro\u2019s abduction, he and his close allies repeatedly visited China to understand how it became the world\u2019s second largest economy and helped millions lift themselves from poverty after decades of famine and violent political extremism.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Maduro (l) with Xi during a visit to a housing development in Caracas in 2014. <\/span> Photograph: Carlos Garc\u00eda Rawlins\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During a 2023 trip to Shanghai, one prominent Maduro envoy, Rafael Lacava, told his hosts<\/a>: \u201cFrom the economic point of view we are in a transition and this transition looks to the Chinese model \u2026 We strongly believe that this is the model we need to follow in the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those visits resulted in the creation of five special economic zones in Venezuela, inspired by the areas Deng set up to attract foreign investment<\/a> in south-east China in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Phil Gunson, an analyst in Caracas for the International Crisis Group, said Chavista intellectuals had been pondering the need for Deng-style change for several years. Rodr\u00edguez, who was put in charge of Venezuela\u2019s oil industry and economy after becoming vice president in 2018, was one of the key proponents of such thinking, alongside her brother, Jorge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been seeking controlled economic reform for a while,\u201d Gunson said, noting how Rodr\u00edguez oversaw a modest economic recovery by partly dollarising the economy and courting business leaders and foreign investors. She has travelled frequently to China since becoming Maduro\u2019s foreign minister in 2014.<\/p>\n

A central goal now was reviving Venezuela\u2019s decrepit oil industry by reversing Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s 2007 nationalisation<\/a> in order to attract tens of billions of dollars of foreign investment. \u201cIt was one thing to shut out foreign firms at the height of a commodities boom \u2026 while oil was $120 a barrel. But now it\u2019s less than half that and there\u2019s a desperate need for inward foreign investment because [state oil company] PDVSA simply cannot revive the oil industry on its own,\u201d Gunson said.<\/p>\n

Ricardo Hausmann, a Venezuelan economist and former minister who runs Harvard\u2019s Growth Lab, said it was possible a China-style economic opening was the \u201cgameplan\u201d of Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s new regime, which Donald Trump has unexpectedly backed while sidelining the opposition movement led by the Nobel peace laureate Mar\u00eda Corina Machado<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Hausmann said he believed such an effort would fail, doubting foreign investors and oil companies would risk their money in a place ExxonMobil\u2019s CEO recently called \u201cuninvestable\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the strategy does succeed, the long-term consequences for Venezuelan democracy could be dire.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>The Deng Xiaoping mural in Shenzhen, the city commissioned to begin development in 1978 under Deng\u2019s opening and reform era. <\/span> Photograph: Ryan Pyle\/Corbis\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Frank Dik\u00f6tter, the author of several books about China, said the heirs of the Great Helmsman had used the \u201csocialist modernity\u201d pioneered by Deng to \u201cbuild up an economy which has given them enough clout to enforce and enhance limits on democracy \u2026 with much greater controls on every aspect of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, under Xi Jinping, China\u2019s most powerful leader since Mao<\/a>, the east-Asian country is the world\u2019s No 2 economy, but also its largest and most sophisticated surveillance state.<\/p>\n

Schell said he suspected Trump had decided to ditch Machado because he felt comfortable with Venezuela becoming an economically prosperous autocracy, so long as it obeyed Washington. \u201cThat\u2019s why he didn\u2019t bring Machado back. He doesn\u2019t want someone with a Nobel prize and a lot of woolly ideas about democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

#Venezuelas #Delcy #Rodr\u00edguez #Latin #American #Deng #Xiaoping #Venezuela<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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