Buying friends to influence People's Republics

Venezuela, whose oil reserves are already in hock to China for some $56 billion dollars, proudly announces it is going further into debt to the same (Shyloks?). Why would a creditor extend more loans to a deadbeat who can't repay what has been borrowed already?  Maybe von Clausewitz would recognize this;

Chinese banks finance a different set of countries than the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and North American and European banks. Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela, which are not able to borrow as easily in global capital markets, have been a focus of Chinese lending in Latin America. In Latin America and elsewhere in the world, Chinese lending is considered to be both profit-driven and a form of diplomacy.

Someday, the Chinese must think, they will become the perfect Latin American useful idiots.