Month: January 2026

One of the leading scholars of China-Latin America relations, Francisco Urdinez is known for coining the concept of “economic displacement”, a theory that also gives its name to his Cambridge University Press book title published in November. The idea holds that China’s rise has reduced US relevance in the region by making partnerships with Beijing more consequential and ties with Washington less essential for many governments. Now, in the wake of US attacks on Caracas and the abduction of Nicolas Maduro, Urdinez examines how Venezuela could upend that framework and…

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused China of profiting from Venezuela’s long-running economic collapse by securing discounted oil, telling senators that removing Nicolas Maduro was necessary to end energy arrangements that he said “favoured Beijing at the expense of the Venezuelan people”. During a hearing of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Rubio portrayed China as a central beneficiary of the Maduro government, arguing that Beijing had taken advantage of sanctions and economic isolation to secure access to heavily discounted crude while expanding its influence in the…

Despite the United States pushing to acquire Greenland, geological and technical constraints have so far prevented any country – including China – from successfully extracting and processing one of the Danish territory’s main critical minerals, a New York-based mining investor said. “In the Arctic, one of the popular – the sort of commonly occurring mineral – is called eudialyte,” said Tomasz Nadrowski, portfolio manager at Amvest Terraden, an investment and corporate finance firm specialising in natural resources. “So far, no one has managed to successfully extract and separate rare earth…