US capture of Maduro could prompt caution in China’s courtship of Latin America

BEIJING/SINGAPORE - The United States’ audacious, and successful, operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro from his fortified compound on Jan 3 could cause China to re-think its Latin America strategy.

As the region remains important in Beijing’s bid for global influence, some analysts say that China will persist with its outreach, especially through investment and trade ties, but with more caution, given the American reassertion in the region.

Others believe China will seek to capitalise on the US operation – regarded by experts as illegal under international law – to build closer ties with Latin American states similarly critical of US foreign policy.

Many Latin American countries have received substantial Chinese investment for many years, but Beijing’s efforts to influence the region have come up against US President Donald Trump’s pledge to reassert US pre-eminence there, including control over the region’s energy and mineral resources.

While

the operation against Maduro

can be seen as the US reasserting its dominance in the Western Hemisphere, Associate Professor Dylan Loh said China will not give up its partners and strategic investments in Latin America.

This is despite the US seeking to dislodge Beijing from the region.

“The way I see it, the vectors for contestation between the US and China will only increase,” Prof Loh of the Nanyang Technological University told The Straits Times.

He added, however, that Beijing is unlikely to confront the US with hard power.

“China will be more assertive, not in the military sense but certainly diplomatically,” he said.

Maduro is expected to face drug-related charges in New York after being captured by the US in a military operation in Caracas, just hours after he had met with China’s special envoy for Latin American Affairs.

Mr Trump has accused him of “narco-terrorism” against the US.

China, which has backed Maduro since he took power in 2013, has

condemned US actions

, accused Washington of violating international law, and called for the deposed leader’s immediate release.

China and Venezuela share an “all-weather strategic partnership”, which was upgraded in 2023 when Maduro met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

With Mr Trump pledging to take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves,

China’s substantial investments

face uncertainty. According to AidData, a unit of the United States-based William and Mary’s Global Research Institute, China’s total lending to Venezuela since 2000 is more than US$100 billion (S$128.6 billion).

In recent decades, China has ramped up primarily economic cooperation with Latin America as part of a push to lead the Global South.

The broader aims include opening up overseas markets for Chinese goods and garnering support for China’s core interests, such as the Taiwan issue.

Mr William Yang, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based non-profit, said it is too early to say whether Maduro’s capture will significantly influence China’s strategy in Latin America. 

But he added that Beijing will likely be more circumspect in the near term, as it assesses the impact that US actions will have on China’s core interests in the region.

“Until we can be sure about the US government’s plan for the next few months – whether Washington plans to maintain large-scale military engagement in Venezuela, and what the post-Maduro governance structure in Venezuela is going to look like – it will be too difficult to definitively say whether China will be forced to fundamentally change its strategy,” said Mr Yang, who tracks China’s foreign policy.

Less than a month before the US operation in Venezuela, China had issued a strategy paper for Latin America and the Caribbean on Dec 10, covering a wide range of topics from diplomacy to security cooperation and cultural exchange.

Aimed at elevating the relationship between Beijing and the region, the paper, which also included a lengthy section on economic development opportunities and an expanded security agenda, called for mutual support on core interests such as national sovereignty, and opposition to “hegemonism and power politics”.

The policy paper - China’s third for Latin America since 2008 – was issued days after the Trump administration’s

National Security Strategy

paper that stressed a reprioritisation of the Western hemisphere.

Yet, a more assertive US in Latin America need not mean a complete retrenchment of China. 

Shanghai-based international relations scholar Shen Dingli said that while the US has returned to the “Monroe Doctrine” – first articulated in 1823 and which views efforts by other countries to influence Latin American states as a threat to US security – this does not preclude the Latin American states’ normal exchanges with other countries.

“As long as China maintains normal relations with Latin America, the Maduro incident will not affect China-Latin America relations,” he told ST. “However, if China’s exchanges with Latin America… involve intentional or unintentional damage to US security, then caution is warranted.” 

Professor Wang Yiwei of Renmin University said that China’s long-term strategy of deepening economic cooperation with Latin America is unlikely to shift, but the investment model, focus and direction might need adjustment, to not be seen as anti-American.

“It will be difficult for the US to completely replace China because the US is not good at infrastructure investments… The key question is how to standardise US-China cooperation in developing markets in Latin America,” he told ST.

The US has long been seen to have under-invested in Latin America, including in infrastructure - a void which has been filled by China’s Belt and Road Initiative. China has investments in, for instance, the Panama Canal area and the Chancay Port in Peru.

Mr Yang of the International Crisis Group also noted that Chinese economic engagement in Latin America over the years has largely been viewed positively by countries in the region.

However, the US operation against Maduro is likely to provide Beijing with another avenue to criticise Washington for being exploitative and having scant regard for national sovereignty. 

Mr Yang said: “China is certainly going to seize this opportunity to contrast itself against the US and present itself as the responsible great power that upholds international law and the rules-based international order, especially among Global South countries.”

He added: “Given the shared concern about the way that the US had carried out the operation against Venezuela among other Latin American countries, particularly Colombia and Brazil, I think Beijing may also try to pull these countries closer to its side.”