“A BIG BLOW FOR CHINA”
With Trump also threatening military action against Colombia and Mexico and having remarked that Cuba’s communist regime “looks like it’s ready to fall” on its own, Latin American countries that signed up to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship Global Security Initiative may now wonder how the pact will protect them if put to the test.
Xi on Monday urged all countries to abide by international law and the UN principles. He said major powers should set an example, while stopping short of naming the US or Venezuela.
Beijing has had considerable success in persuading Latin American states to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, with Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras all siding with the US$19 trillion economy’s talk of strategic partnership over the last 20 years.
Venezuela switched recognition in 1974, a relationship that deepened under Hugo Chavez, the socialist former soldier who took power in 1998 and became Beijing’s closest ally in Latin America, distancing his country from Washington while lauding the Chinese Communist Party’s governance model and presiding over democratic backsliding at home.
The close relationship continued after Chavez died in 2013 and Maduro became leader, even enrolling his son at the top-ranking Peking University in 2016.
In return, Beijing poured money into Venezuela’s oil refineries and infrastructure, providing an economic lifeline as the US and its allies tightened sanctions from 2017.
China purchased around US$1.6 billion worth of goods in 2024, according to Chinese customs data, the latest full-year figures available.
Oil accounted for about half of the total.
“It was a big blow to China, we wanted to look like a dependable friend to Venezuela,” said a Chinese government official briefed on a meeting between Maduro and China’s special representative for Latin American and Caribbean affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, hours before the Venezuelan president was captured.