What makes China unusual [among Venezuela's creditors] is not just the amount it is willing to lend but the way it lends. First, Beijing has chosen to be opaque: we know neither the terms of the loans nor the uses of the money. The debt is repaid in oil, making Wall Street bondholders junior to China.
[…]
Second, the debt was never authorised by the Venezuelan parliament due to the specious argument that it was not debt, but “finance”, because it was not to be paid in dollars but in oil… [emphasis added]