Authors: Michael Martina, Trevor Hunnicutt, and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – One of the many goals of the U.S. military campaign to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last week was to send a message to China: Stay away from the Americas.
For at least two decades, Beijing has sought to build influence in Latin America, not only to pursue economic opportunities but also to gain a strategic foothold on the doorstep of its biggest geopolitical rival.
China’s advances — from satellite tracking stations in Argentina and ports in Peru to economic support for Venezuela — have irritated successive U.S. administrations, including Donald Trump.
Several Trump administration officials told Reuters that the U.S. president’s move against Maduro was partly to counter China’s ambitions and that Beijing’s days of using debt to obtain cheap oil from Venezuela were “over.”
“We don’t want you there”
Trump made that message clear on Friday, expressing dissatisfaction with China and Russia as “next-door neighbors” in a meeting with oil executives.
“I told China, I told Russia, ‘We get along great with you, we like you very much, we don’t want you there, you won’t be there,'” Trump said. He said he would now tell China that “we are open for business” and that they can “buy all the oil they want from us or from the United States.”
In the early morning of January 3, the US commandos stormed into Caracas and captured the Venezuelan president and his wife in a successful raid, which dealt a blow to China’s interests and prestige.
The air defense systems that the US military quickly destroyed were supplied by China and Russia, and Trump said that 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil, much of which was previously destined for Chinese ports, would now be shipped to the United States
Analysts say Maduro’s arrest exposes the limits of Beijing’s ability to exert its will in the Americas.
Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said the attack exposed the gulf between China’s “great power rhetoric and its actual influence” in the Western Hemisphere.
“Beijing can protest diplomatically, but once Washington decides to apply direct pressure, it cannot protect partners or assets,” he said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement to Reuters that it rejected what it called “unilateral, illegal and bullying actions” by the United States.
Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said that China has maintained friendly exchanges and cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries. No matter how the situation develops, we will continue to be friends and partners.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
But one administration official said “China should be concerned about their position in the Western Hemisphere,” adding that their partners in the region were increasingly aware that China could not protect them.
Trump’s China policy is unclear
The Trump administration’s policy toward Beijing appears to be contradictory, making concessions to quell the trade war while offering firmer support for Taiwan.
The Venezuela action appears to be tilting U.S. policy in a tougher direction.
Indeed, the timing of the U.S. attack exacerbated Beijing’s embarrassment.
Just hours before he was overthrown, Maduro met with China’s special envoy for Latin America Qiu Xiaoqi in Caracas, his last public appearance before becoming a U.S. prisoner.
Another U.S. official said the meeting, which was held via camera even as U.S. forces were secretly preparing for an operation, showed Beijing was caught off guard.
“If they had known, they wouldn’t have been so public,” the U.S. official told Reuters.
For years, Beijing invested heavily in Venezuela’s refineries and infrastructure, providing an economic lifeline to the United States and its allies after they tightened sanctions in 2017.
Along with Russia, China has also provided funding and equipment to the Venezuelan military, including a radar array it recently claimed is capable of detecting advanced U.S. military aircraft. These systems did little to prevent attacks that U.S. officials boasted resulted in no damage.
“Any country in the world that has Chinese defense equipment is looking at their air defense systems and wondering how safe they are from the United States,” said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank.
“They also note that China’s diplomatic assurances to Iran and Venezuela resulted in zero meaningful protection when U.S. troops arrived.”
China is currently studying what went wrong with those defense systems in order to shore up its own systems, according to a person with knowledge of its response.
China faces other regional risks
China may soon come under pressure elsewhere in the region.
It seeks to increase its influence in Cuba, where the United States suspects Beijing of intelligence-gathering operations. China denies this but last year pledged to increase intelligence sharing with Cuba.
In the days following the Venezuela operation, Trump suggested that U.S. military intervention in Cuba, which was suffering from the loss of Venezuelan oil, might not be necessary because the country seemed poised to collapse on its own.
The Trump administration also continues to pressure Chinese companies to stay away from port operations around the Panama Canal, a vital waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
A State Department official said the United States “remains concerned” about China’s influence near the canal but applauded Panama’s actions to curb it, including withdrawing from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and reviewing Panamanian port concessions under a contract with Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison.
While China may be at a disadvantage in the region, analysts warn that expanded U.S. military involvement in Venezuela or a deterioration in security there could open the door for Beijing to reassert itself.
Daniel Russell, a former senior State Department official now at the Asia Society, said Washington’s dramatic shift under Trump away from a rule-of-law posture toward a “sphere-of-influence logic focused on the Western Hemisphere” could work to China’s advantage.
“Beijing wants Washington to accept that Asia belongs to China’s sphere of influence, and there is no doubt that it also wants the United States to be trapped in the quagmire of Venezuela,” he said.
(Reporting by Michael Martina, Trevor Hunnicutt and David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Bo Erickson; Editing by Don Durfee and Rod Nickel)