On January 3, 2026, the United States (U.S.) carried out a military operation against Venezuela; as part of this operation, President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were detained. The fact that Maduro had met in Caracas with China’s Special Representative for Latin America, Qiu Xiaoqi, only hours before the intervention gave the developments a pronounced diplomatic and strategic dimension. In this respect, the U.S. intervention in Venezuela not only disrupted the country’s internal political balance but also revealed a new arena of power struggle that directly affected the economic sphere of influence and strategic positioning that China had gradually built in Venezuela. This development has reopened debate over the sustainability of Beijing’s Venezuela-centered interests and the limits of its broader strategic approach in Latin America.
China has framed Latin America as an area for peaceful cooperation, reflecting its long-standing development-focused diplomatic approach to Third World countries. This rhetoric has enabled China to position itself as a partner that promotes development through infrastructure investments, trade, and financing, distancing itself from military and ideological competition. In parallel, many Latin American actors have also chosen to shape their relations with China primarily on the basis of economic gains and development opportunities, avoiding the geopolitical costs created by great power competition. Venezuela is among the countries that have adopted this approach.
Venezuela’s relations with China began to strengthen following Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in 1999; after 2013, during the presidency of Nicolás Maduro, this interaction acquired a more comprehensive and multidimensional character. In particular, the growing tensions with the United States coming to dominate Venezuela’s foreign policy discourse created the conditions for Caracas to meet its economic and financial needs largely through China; over time, this rapprochement expanded to include the defense sector as well. Indeed, Venezuela has emerged as the leading country in Latin America in terms of procuring Chinese-origin defense systems, with acquisitions spanning a broad spectrum ranging from light armored platforms and rocket systems to anti-tank and anti-ship missile technologies.[i]
The economic foundation of this strategic rapprochement has been laid by the high-volume loans provided by China to Venezuela since the beginning of the 21st century. By providing over $100 billion in loans to oil-rich Venezuela, one of its closest partners in South America, China has positioned the country as the largest single recipient of Chinese financing on a global scale. These loans have been used primarily to finance railways, power plants, and other large-scale infrastructure projects,[ii] with the repayment mechanism based on oil shipments.
This relationship of economic dependence became particularly visible after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Venezuela in 2019. Following the sanctions, China emerged as the primary buyer of Venezuelan crude oil; indeed, a market report published by Kpler revealed that in the final months of 2025, approximately 80 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports were directed to the Chinese market.[iii] Nevertheless, despite this high level of trade concentration, the fact that Venezuelan-origin oil accounts for only about 4 percent of China’s total oil imports indicates that this dependency carries limited strategic weight from Beijing’s perspective. This resulting asymmetric structure affords China greater flexibility and room for maneuver in its Venezuela policy.
Indeed, it is believed that China has the capacity to source crude oil of similar quality from countries such as Canada, Iran, and Iraq in the event of a potential disruption in oil exports from Venezuela.[iv] However, the higher costs associated with these alternative supply channels make the long-term economic sustainability of this option debatable. This situation reveals that Venezuelan oil is positioned as a secondary factor evaluated within the framework of cost and risk balance rather than an indispensable resource for China.
However, despite a noticeable decline in Chinese investment in recent years due to delays in Venezuela’s repayment of billions of dollars in loans to China and structural problems in oil production, it is difficult to say that Beijing’s political and geopolitical importance to Caracas has completely disappeared. Indeed, during Nicolás Maduro’s official visit to Beijing in 2023, bilateral relations were elevated to the level of a “strategic partnership under all circumstances,” which envisions long-term cooperation in politics, trade, energy, and other strategic areas and is attributed to only a limited number of countries in China’s foreign policy. This demonstrates that China continues to view Venezuela not only as an economic partner but also as a strategic actor in its regional and global calculations.
China’s decision to maintain its relations with Venezuela at this level and its determination to sustain its presence throughout Latin America is being assessed by Washington within a broader geopolitical framework. The United States views China’s deepening presence in the region as the emergence of a strategic area where it could increase its political and economic sphere of influence in its immediate vicinity; it considers this development to challenge the region’s traditional geopolitical position as an area of US influence. Therefore, China’s progress in the region is being addressed not only in the context of economic competition but also in the context of global power balances and strategic containment debates.
Trump’s explicit expression of discomfort with China and Russia becoming the United States’ “neighbors” can also be interpreted as an extension of this rhetorical framework.[v] Against this political backdrop, the Beijing administration has categorically denied a US report claiming that Washington would instruct the interim Venezuelan government to sever its economic ties with China and Russia, strongly condemning the allegation.[vi]
As a reflection of this reactive framework, Xi Jinping characterized the United States’ actions in Venezuela as “unilateral and coercive behavior,” emphasizing that “no country can act as the ruler of the world” and that respect for international law “must prevail.” Looking ahead, it appears likely that China will harden its diplomatic rhetoric and adopt more cautious and protective measures aimed at safeguarding its economic interests in the Venezuela dossier. Nevertheless, according to Eric Olander, Editor-in-Chief of The China–Global South Project, China’s primary concern lies in the possibility that other South American countries may begin to distance themselves from large-scale Chinese investments out of consideration for potential U.S. reactions.[vii] This situation demonstrates that the Venezuela crisis poses not only bilateral challenges for China but also structural risks for its broader strategic positioning across Latin America.
Despite this perception of risk, the likelihood of China taking direct and concrete action to support Venezuela appears quite limited. The Beijing administration is expected to avoid steps that could jeopardize the bilateral summit between US President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping scheduled for April and the fragile trade truce newly established with the US.[viii] In this context, it is more likely that China will prioritize limiting the potential costs to its economic interests by maintaining the existing balance of power, rather than escalating comprehensive geopolitical competition with the US in Latin America.[ix]
In conclusion, the United States’ military intervention in Venezuela has made visible the fragility of the economic and strategic presence that China had built in the country over many years, while also clearly exposing the limits of Beijing’s engagements in Latin America. The Venezuelan case demonstrates that, despite a high degree of economic concentration, China’s influence in the region rests on a strategically asymmetric structure and that Beijing has been particularly reluctant to respond through direct military or hard-power means. In this context, while China continues to emphasize sovereignty and multilateralism at the rhetorical level, in practice it seeks to contain risks and recalibrate its regional positioning within a more cautious framework, avoiding direct geopolitical escalation with the United States. From this perspective, the Venezuela crisis constitutes a striking example that reveals the pragmatic nature of China’s Latin America policy—one shaped less by ideological claims than by considerations of cost, risk, and great-power balance.
[i] “China-Venezuela Fact Sheet”, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, https://www.uscc.gov/research/china-venezuela-fact-sheet-short-primer-relationship#_edn43, (Date accessed: 14.01.2026).
[ii]“Venezuela owes China Money. Will Beijing see it?’, GZERO, https://www.gzeromedia.com/news/analysis/venezuela-owes-china-money-will-beijing-see-it, (Date accessed: 14.01.2026).
[iii] “Maduro’s capture is a blow to China. But on Chinese social media it’s being hailed as a blueprint for Taiwan”, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/06/world/venezuela-china-taiwan-analysis-intl-hnk, (Date accessed: 14.01.2026).
[iv] “China-Venezuela Fact Sheet”, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, https://www.uscc.gov/research/china-venezuela-fact-sheet-short-primer-relationship#_edn43, (Date accessed: 14.01.2026).
[v] Ibid.
[vi] “Trump’s Venezuela raid has created chaos – and that is a risk for China”, BBC, Donald Trump’s Venezuela risk brings risk to China’s plans, (Date accessed: 14.01.2026).
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] “Maduro’s capture is a blow to China. But on Chinese social media it’s being hailed as a blueprint for Taiwan”, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/06/world/venezuela-china-taiwan-analysis-intl-hnk. (Date accessed: 14.01.2026).
