Actually, the Hugo Chavez now Maduro dictatorship styles itself as a left wing socialist regime and its repression of human rights, democracy, press freedom, and the other norms of a free society are reminiscent of the 68 year regime of the communist party in China.

Things are now so terrible in Venezuela that gallows humour has taken root as it did in the old USSR and in communist China.  (e.g. Starvation  resulted in 2015 in an average loss of 14 pounds per person in Venezuela and is now called "The Maduro Diet").

Hypocrisy is the mother's milk of politics, particularly our Liberal politics.

And so it is that while Freeland "expresses horror to see Venezuela sliding into a dictatorship" she and the government have no problem sliding into a free trade relationship with communist China, the most repressive, cruel, exploitative dictatorship in modern history.

I support the government's aping of the US position on Venezuela.

I hope it will be similarly circumspect in regard to China