Beijing
—
China has good reason to oppose increased U.S. military pressure on Venezuela and the recent U.S. interception of the country’s oil tankers.
The U.S. maneuver, part of President Donald Trump’s “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned vessels around Venezuela, strikes at the economic heart of one of Beijing’s closest Latin American partners and targets an industry that has long benefited China, which has captured about 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports in recent months, analysts say.
Beijing has condemned the interception as a “grave violation of international law” and pledged to Caracas in a phone call last week between top diplomats from both countries that it opposes “all forms of unilateralism and bullying.”
But it is also clear that Beijing is prepared to use US aggression to its advantage. They are trying to use the US invasion as another reason on the list of reasons why the US should not be the world’s leading superpower, and as a window into how President Trump is rolling out his revival of the Monroe Doctrine.
The White House’s National Security Strategy, released earlier this month, includes a revamp of its centuries-old policy, updating what had historically warned European colonial powers against interfering in the Western Hemisphere to a Trump-era vision of a “stable” region “free from hostile foreign incursions and ownership of major assets.”
This strategy has sparked a great deal of analysis in Chinese policy circles, with analysts discussing whether it signals the United States withdrawing from its role as a global power and focusing on its own backyard, leaving room for Beijing to expand its influence in Asia and the world.
For now, Beijing is not waiting for an answer to this question to criticize how the United States is handling its own backyard regarding the Venezuela issue or to signal that it will not back down on its footprint in the region.
The U.S.’s “escalating actions against Venezuela” have put the country in a position that “goes against the world’s moral standards,” the state-run Global Times International said in an editorial highlighting Monday’s tanker interception.
Analyzes in Chinese state media were even more frank, with researchers at a government-run think tank suggesting that if the U.S. escalated its maritime operations to a large-scale invasion, it could trigger a “‘second Vietnam War.'”
Earlier this month, China doubled down on its own message and released its first new policy document on Latin America and the Caribbean in nearly a decade, after the United States had already built up its military in the Caribbean and carried out attacks on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the region.
China’s agenda, released about a week after the White House’s national security strategy, included dozens of areas suggesting increased cooperation with the region, from aerospace to law enforcement.
Whether timed with Washington’s moves or not, the newspaper reiterated China’s core message of seeking to replace the United States as a leader and reshape a world it sees as unfairly dominated by the West.
“As a developing country and a member of the Global South, China has always been more or less in solidarity with the Global South, including Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said, using the term to refer to typical emerging economies in the global south.
It also signaled that Beijing has no intention of backing away from the region, where Venezuela has been a major beneficiary, where it has spent the last few decades ramping up diplomacy and providing billions of dollars in loans for infrastructure and other projects.
The Monroe Doctrine’s “Trump corollary” appears to be aimed at these ties, with the strategic document prioritizing the Americas and stating that the United States would “deny the ability of non-hemispheric competitors to own or control assets of strategic importance in the hemisphere.”
The Trump administration claims this means China “operates” the canal and has already launched a campaign to expel Hong Kong developers from the Panama Canal’s operational ports. Security concerns about China and Russia have also heightened President Trump’s interest in gaining control of Danish Greenland, alarming Denmark and U.S. allies across Europe.
President Trump has said he is targeting the regime of Nicolas Maduro in his military push against Venezuela, alleging that the regime uses oil money to finance “narco-terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping.” He has signaled he wants to open up U.S. access to Venezuelan land, oil and assets that he claims were “stolen” when the country nationalized its oil fields in the 1970s.
But President Trump has also targeted China and Russia, which have close ties to countries he considers great powers.
Both countries have been staunch diplomatic supporters of Maduro’s government, even as Venezuela has fallen into a deep economic crisis and rights groups and other governments have denounced political repression over contentious 2024 elections that could extend Maduro’s rule.
Representatives from Moscow and China condemned the US pressure campaign against Venezuela at a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, with Chinese representative Sun Lei saying China “supports all countries to protect their sovereignty and national dignity” and urged the US to avoid further escalation.
There are other reasons why the Chinese government is paying close attention.
Last month, oil from Venezuela accounted for 5% of total imports, data analysis firm Kpler shared with CNN. One unlicensed tanker, the Centuries, seized by the US is owned by a company registered in Hong Kong.
However, in the face of a U.S. show of force, China is unlikely to go beyond rhetoric and flex its military might to support Venezuela or increase its involvement in Latin America.
But the Trump administration appears to be carefully assessing how its increased focus on the region could affect its engagement in other parts of the world.
International observers have questioned whether China can draw lessons from U.S. moves in the region, where it is widely seen as seeking to become the dominant power and achieve its goal of controlling Taiwan, an autonomous democratic island it claims.
In China, analysts and policy thinkers are focused on how President Trump’s reboot of the Monroe Doctrine will affect the global balance of power.
Some argue that this signals a reprioritization of American interests or Trump’s vision of a world divided into “spheres of influence” led by the United States and its allies, Russia and China.
That means the United States is “unlikely to interfere too much in East Asian issues such as the Taiwan issue or Sino-Japanese relations, and instead recognizes China’s dominance in this area of influence,” one such scholar, Mei Yang, vice dean of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen, said in a recent analysis.
But May and other China policy experts have suggested that this is a “temporary strategic withdrawal” by the United States, and that the United States will not give up its military superiority or competition with China.
So even if Beijing sees the upside to the United States’ focus on its own backyard, the sense of urgency Chinese officials feel to control the global narrative remains the same. That is why the United States’ military aggression in its own waters is a convenient topic for the Chinese government. Beijing has long been accused by the United States and its allies of similar actions in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
So, so far, Trump’s actions toward Venezuela and invocation of 19th-century policies appear to have given Beijing another way to protect its own record and frame the United States as a great power from a bygone era.
