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Hours before his life and the fate of his country was changed dramatically, Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, was exchanging smiles and handshakes with a Chinese delegation in the presidential palace in Caracas.
On Friday evening, shortly before he was seized by US forces, Maduro wrote on Telegram of his meeting with China’s special envoy for Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi: “A fraternal meeting that reaffirms the strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship between China and Venezuela. Through thick and thin!”
Those bonds will be put to the test now that the US president, Donald Trump, has upended the government of one of China’s key “all-weather” strategic partners in Latin America, the term officially adopted in a joint statement signed by Maduro and China’s president, Xi Jinping, in 2023.
China has, unlike European countries, led the charge in condemning the US’s actions in removing by force the head of a foreign state. China has also called for Maduro’s release and backed a UN security council meeting, requested by Colombia, to debate Trump’s decision to seize him.
On Sunday, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said: “We have never believed that any country can act as the world’s police, nor do we accept that any nation can claim to be the world’s judge.”
Chinese social media was awash with content condemning the US operation, with many accusing Washington of colonialism, while content that celebrated Maduro’s capture appeared to be censored.
Wang Yiwei, the director of the international affairs institute at Renmin University in Beijing, said Trump’s actions were “imperialist” and that Venezuela was likely “just the first” country in Latin America to be subjected to this kind of assault.
China has been boosting its diplomacy and investment in Latin America for years, challenging US influence in Washington’s back yard. Last year, Beijing hosted a dialogue between China and Latin American and Caribbean countries and announced that China-Latin America trade had reached a record high of $519bn.
So Beijing will also be concerned about what the crisis in Venezuela means for China’s interests in the oil-rich country and for its influence in the region.
Venezuela is the fourth-biggest recipient of loans from Chinese official lenders, receiving about $106bn in commitments between 2000 and 2023, according to AidData, a research institute at William and Mary University in Virginia. In 2024, Venezuela’s debts to China were thought to total about $10bn.
On Monday, China’s top financial regulator asked major lenders to report their exposure to Venezuela, reported Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources.
Victor Shih, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, said: “If under US pressure, the Venezuelan government, which is highly indebted to multiple actors, places US creditors and claimants well ahead of Chinese ones, Chinese banks may see a significant amount of losses.”
As with the US, many of China’s interests in Venezuela are linked to oil.
For years, Beijing has extended credit to Venezuela in loan-for-oil deals, which has made China the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude. In December, a tanker bound for China and thought to be carrying Venezuelan oil was seized by US forces as part of Trump’s campaign against Maduro’s regime.
The money owed by Venezuelan borrowers is likely to be more important to Beijing than the oil itself. Venezuelan oil only accounts for about 4% of China’s total imports.
Shih said Beijing might be able to use its well-established leverage against the US, such as its ability to halt the export of rare earths, to force the US to come to some kind of deal with Chinese creditors. “For example, future oil proceeds can be split in a way that still leaves substantial cash flows to Chinese creditors, who can restructure the debt to have slightly lower interest and longer duration.”
The economic repercussions for China may rest upon who ultimately takes control in Venezuela. Trump said the US would “run” the South American country but this may be in the form of a puppet regime rather than US forces. That would provide Beijing with cover to seek settlement with Caracas directly rather than negotiate with the US in the midst of an already challenging trade war.
Trump has said the US will exploit Venezuela’s rich oil reserves to “rebuild” the country, while his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has suggested the US will hold Venezuela’s oil exports hostage to exert leverage on the new leadership in Caracas.
Shen Dingli, a senior international relations scholar in Shanghai, said: “Should Venezuela’s new government decide not to honour agreements made by the Maduro administration, China would have no choice but to pursue international litigation.” Shen said any legal action would be targeted at Venezuela rather than the US.
Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu and Lillian Yang
