Never waste a crisis: China collects Venezuelan oil as its regime struggles and its population suffers

China is taking advantage of Venezuela's crisis to gain valuable oil caches while looking to gain influence throughout Latin America, U.S. lawmakers and officials worry. “It's not clear that China is necessarily using Venezuela as a foothold,” Kenneth Merten, an ambassador in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We are obviously watching very carefully what China does throughout the hemisphere and we are monitoring that very carefully.” Merten offered that view after committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., noted that China is receives “hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil, every day” from the cash-strapped country as a debt repayment from strongman Nicolas Maduro’s regime. The Communist behemoth is poised to pour more money into Venezuela’s oil industry. More…