A country rich in mineral resources and full of flowing oil in the ground must not have a bad economy. However, there are exceptions to everything, and Venezuela is a country where God chases food and ends up in debt.
Venezuela, the world's largest country in terms of oil reserves, is now a debtor country, with China alone having $50 billion in debt. If China hadn't stopped transfusing its blood, there might be more now.
Fat people do not eat in a day, and the rich and poor will not suddenly form overnight, and the situation in Venezuela today is slowly "accumulated" by itself. After being stopped by China, how is Venezuela now?
Prosperity in the past
If there is a "child of God" on the surface, then the first thing that comes to mind must be Venezuela. Because its "priest" has given it unlimited wealth, it is rare in the world, both in terms of natural environment and natural resources.
Venezuela is a country located in Latin America, its land area of 912,100 square kilometers, although there is still some gap with the mainland, but for Latin American countries, this is already very large.
It also has a very advantageous geographical location, adjacent to the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, with a coastline of 2,813 kilometers. The terrain of the country is different and varied, including plateaus, plains, mountains, etc.
Venezuela's geographical advantages give Venezuela rich natural wealth and diverse survival options. Its vast arable land, diverse terrain, and natural climate, make it possible to grow a wide variety of crops. It can grow rice, corn, sorghum, coffee, sugar cane and a range of other cash crops.
Therefore, Venezuela can become a big agricultural country, surviving by growing crops, developing agriculture and exporting food. However, its "priests" still fear that this will not be enough, and it has stored a wealth of resources for it under the surface of Venezuela.
In our impression, most countries rich in natural resources belong to the Middle East, but its resources are more abundant than those of Middle Eastern countries. As early as 2011, Venezuela announced that the country's crude oil reserves reached 296.5 billion barrels.
This figure means that Venezuela surpassed Saudi Arabia to become the world's largest crude oil reserve. Not only that, but it is also blooming, and its natural gas storage ranks eighth in the world.
Venezuela, with its rich natural resources, made a lot of money during World War II, when many countries around the world experienced oil shortages. When the market demand is large, the price will naturally go up, and the price of oil will suddenly rise sharply. Venezuela has achieved rapid economic development thanks to this oil price.
It later became one of the founders of OPEC, working together to monopolize markets and raise oil prices to preserve their wealth accumulation.
As a result, Venezuela became the richest country in Latin America in the last century and one of the richest countries in the world, and this is its highlight moment. When the economy develops, it is necessary to consider the living conditions of the people. That's why the Venezuelan government decided to invest more in social welfare.
The government has invested a lot of money in various aspects such as medical care, education, housing, and insurance, so that people can have very good living conditions, so that everyone's life, food, clothing, housing and transportation can be effectively guaranteed. At one point, Venezuela's social welfare surpassed that of Switzerland.
But there are two sides to everything. The Venezuelan government at that time only wanted to ensure people's lives, and invested a lot of money so that they no longer worried about their lives. However, this also makes them lazy.
Gradual decay
After development, Venezuela provided strong social welfare for the people, which made the Venezuelan people begin to become dependent and lazy. They feel that everything has the government's back, even if they are unemployed, they begin to be careless about everything, and they are no longer diligent about work. So, this has caused the Venezuelan economy to slowly decline.
When Venezuela's gross national income began to shrink dramatically, there was a fiscal deficit and the government could no longer afford such favorable social welfare conditions.
After the fiscal crisis, the Venezuelan government also made a wrong decision. They printed a lot of money, which caused inflation.
This has caused prices in Venezuela to rise like wild vines, and unemployment has risen sharply. No one can afford to buy anything, and the most basic livelihood cannot be guaranteed. In Venezuela at that time, even toilet paper became a luxury, and supplies were so scarce that many people could not even buy toilet paper.
In addition to price shortages, they also face food shortages. In 2019, Venezuela's average food shortage rate was as high as 70%, and less than a third of people could live on three meals a day. Although the government distributes food, it is simply not enough, and many people have to find food in garbage cans.
When the basic livelihood of human beings cannot be guaranteed, let alone other animals. During this period, the number of animal species in Venezuela began to decline, and many animals had nothing to eat, or were starved to death because they did not have enough food.
Public services are also beginning to collapse, water and electricity cuts have become a natural phenomenon, and shortages of medical supplies have left many people dying because they have not been treated.
Dark clouds appeared in the Venezuelan sky, and the day began to get as dark as the night. When life is no longer possible, people begin to riot, marching in the streets, looting in the streets. No one shows up at night in Venezuela because of unimaginable dangers.
The prosperity of the past is long gone, and now Venezuela is dilapidated. When the government can't solve it on its own, it starts looking for foreign aid.
Stop blood transfusions
Venezuela is adjacent to the United States, and it should logically turn to the United States for help at such a critical juncture. However, as early as when the United States was still surging with the Soviet Union, Venezuela chose to side with the Soviet Union and offended the United States.
So, it suffered sanctions from the United States.
Many countries chose to ignore Venezuela's pleas in order not to offend the United States. When it hit a wall everywhere, Venezuela had to seek China's help.
As a responsible and humanitarian, China extended a helping hand to Venezuela as soon as possible. In fact, this is also a matter of mutual benefit and win-win. The continent is short of oil, and Venezuela is rich, and we give them loans, and they use oil to pay off their debts.
However, this balance was disbalanced as oil prices fell. When the price of oil fell, Venezuela offered to extend the term of the loan indefinitely and no longer export oil to China regularly to repay its debt, which was a default. After that, Venezuela wants to continue to borrow from the mainland, which is of course impossible.
At this time, China has already borrowed 50 billion Venezuela, according to their approach, we may not even recover the debt of this 50 billion US dollars loan, how can we continue to transfuse blood to this bottomless pit?
Besides, borrowing is not in a hurry. If China blindly lends money to Venezuela, it will become dependent and its economy will not recover. We can only help them through the crisis when they are in desperate need, but after the crisis is alleviated, they have to develop on their own.
Venezuela's own natural conditions are very superior, as long as it works hard and does things seriously, it will naturally usher in a turnaround and recovery. When the border environment slowly changed, the United States also slowly gave up its restrictions on Venezuela, coupled with China's previous loans to them, and now Venezuela's economy has begun to improve a little, no longer as difficult as it was at the beginning. However, nature cannot be compared to its heyday.
Brief summary:
Venezuela, the "chosen son", can come to this point is also something that no one expected, it has the living conditions that others dream of, it could easily develop strong and live a good life, but it can make itself such a mess and be in debt.