In south America, the Spanish ex-pression cuento ehino-literally a "Chinese story"-means a fairy tale or a fantasy. Is it too harsh a way to describe the recent talk about a blossoming trans-Pacific partnership, linking a confident, commodity-hungry China with a continent in search of new friends? As fantasies go, this is certainly a powerful one, and it does have some basis in hard reality. But an element of make-believe is never absent either. On a visit to Beijing in December, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez (above, left) told some tallish tales about the revolutionary spirit linking his nation and his hosts. Unveiling a statue of the (quite conservative) Simon Bolivar, who led Venezuela to independence, Mr Chavez called the anti-colonial hero a soul-mate of Mao Zedong, and noted the "great similarities" between the revolutions they led. To mark this brotherhood, Mr Chavez added, China would invest heavily in Venezuela's oil sector, while bilateral trade would hit $3 billion in 2005, more than double the 2004 figure.
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