In early December, as U.S. forces prepared for a possible attack on Venezuela, a Chinese navy ship sailed near the American armada gathered in the Caribbean. The CNS Silk Road Ark, a massive vessel in China's South Sea Fleet, didn't pose much of a threat to the U.S. warships. But its appearance in the waters near Venezuela presented exactly the kind of split screen Beijing wanted the nations of Latin America to see. On one side were the Americans, their ships loaded with missiles and aircraft that had already killed dozens of alleged drug smugglers in strikes on small boats. The U.S. arsenal would soon be used to storm Venezuela's capital and capture its president, Nicolas Maduro. On the other was a floating military hospital on a mission to provide free medical care to thousands of people in the region and, along the way, to burnish China's image as a better partner than the United States. Cultivating that image has long been central to Xi Jinping's strategy in Latin America, and...
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