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In this episode of China Considered: Quick Takes, Elizabeth Economy examines how China is assessing the US military strike in Venezuela—and why the implications matter far beyond Latin America. While some analysts argue the action makes a Chinese move on Taiwan more likely, Economy explains why Beijing’s calculus is driven first by its own military readiness, its assessment of Taiwan’s trajectory, and expectations about U.S. intervention—not by events in Venezuela alone.
Economy argues that China has real stakes in what comes next. Beijing has deep economic investments in Venezuela’s oil, telecom, and mining sectors, growing security interests including arms sales and satellite facilities, and a broader political interest in positioning itself as a responsible global actor. The US strike may diminish China’s influence in Venezuela, challenge its security footprint in the Western Hemisphere, and expose the limits of its willingness - or ability- to back partners beyond rhetorical support. Together, these pressures raise deeper questions about what China’s global ambitions look like in practice.
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of China Considered: Quick Takes. I’m Liz Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Today, I’d like to talk about the implications of the US military strike against Venezuela for China.
Many analysts have suggested that the US action makes it more likely that Beijing is going to take military action against Taiwan. I don’t think this is the case. I think China is going to base its decision on Taiwan on whether or not it believes its military is ready, whether it thinks Taiwan is moving closer or further away from the Mainland, and how likely it thinks the United States is to intervene if China were to take action.
That doesn’t mean China doesn’t care about the US action. It cares a lot. China has significant economic interests in Venezuela. Although it only gets about four percent of its oil from Venezuela, its oil, telecom, and mining companies are all deeply invested in the country. These are precisely the sectors that the Trump administration has targeted for competition with China.
We don’t know exactly what President Trump has planned for US involvement in the Venezuelan economy, but we can be pretty sure that whatever he does is going to diminish Beijing’s economic influence.
China also cares because it has significant security interests at stake. It provides arms to Venezuela, it does joint military exercises with Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and South Africa, and it has two satellite ground stations that provide it real-time intelligence and military data.
Again, we don’t know precisely what the Trump administration has planned, but we do know it has said that it does not want Russian or Chinese military beachheads in the Western Hemisphere.
Finally, China cares about the political and diplomatic implications. This is a bit more of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the US military strike clearly breached international law, and it forged China the opportunity to once again present itself as the responsible and stabilizing force on the international stage.
Public opinion polls globally increasingly favor China over the United States, and Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has already met with the Chinese ambassador and thanked him for China’s support.
On the other hand, China’s inability—or unwillingness—to do much more than offer rhetorical condemnation of the US strike raises broader questions about its role on the global stage. What does it really mean for a country like Venezuela to have a comprehensive strategic partnership with China? What is China willing to do substantively in support of its big global initiatives to transform the international system? And what are going to be the contours of China as a global superpower moving forward?
I’ll address these questions and more in future episodes of China Considered: Quick Takes. Please tune in and hit the subscribe button.
Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Named by Politico as among “the ten names that matter in China policy,” Economy served as senior adviser for China in the US Department of Commerce in 2021–23 and is the author of several influential books on Chinese politics and policy, most recently The World According to China.