After beating challenger Henrique Capriles in Venezuela’s presidential election Sunday, Hugo Chavez is set for another six years as that country’s leader.  His victory assures a continued close relationship with China, which depends heavily on that Latin nation’s oil resources, which amounted to 640,000 barrels per day during 2012.  Had Capriles won, there may have been modifications in the relationship not beneficial to China, some analysts believe.  A key factor in Chavez’s win, political observers say, was his ability to openly transfer income from Chinese oil exports and loans to Venezuela’s lower-income classes. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, however, refuted claims that Chinese capital influences politics in Venezuela, calling them totally groundless.

The real-life danger that China’s dependency on Venezuelan oil might provoke international political strife if anything threatened to disrupt these oil deliveries is the very theme upon which the new spy fiction thriller, The China Oil Plot, is based.