China ‘strongly condemns’ U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Maduro

China denounced the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as a violation of international law Saturday, as Beijing faced the loss of a key ally in South America in an action some fear could provide a model for a future strike against Taiwan.

In a statement, China’s foreign ministry said Beijing was “deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the U.S.’s blatant use of force against a sovereign state.” Military strikes against Venezuela and the seizing of Mr. Maduro were “hegemonic acts” that “threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region,” it added.

China has been a major backer of Venezuela since the days of Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, and has remained a key investor in the country and buyer of Venezuelan oil even as Caracas has become isolated on the global stage as a result of U.S. pressure and popular opposition to the Venezuelan government.

The stunning U.S. operation to remove Mr. Maduro took place only a day after he met with Qiu Xiaoqi, China’s special representative for Latin American and Caribbean Affairs. The meeting was also attended by Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s vice-president and now interim leader since Mr. Maduro’s forced removal.

According to Chinese state media, Mr. Qiu “reiterated that China and Venezuela are long-standing strategic partners” and said Beijing was keen to strengthen ties and enhance co-ordination to “jointly create a bright future for China-Venezuela relations.”

Just what China can do in response to Mr. Maduro’s capture is unclear, however. Beijing, along with Moscow, backed a request for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday, in response to what Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN Samuel Moncada described as a “colonial war aimed at destroying our republican form of government.”

At a previous Security Council meeting in December in response to increasing U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, China’s ambassador Fu Cong said Beijing opposed “all acts of unilateralism and bullying” and urged Washington to refrain from interfering in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

China did not press the issue however, and Venezuela did not come up in meetings late last year between U.S. and Chinese officials – including between Mr. Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to official readouts – as both Beijing and Washington sought to tamp down a trade war launched by Mr. Trump shortly after his return to office. The Chinese response to U.S. strikes on Venezuelan ships was so muted that one media organization asked in mid-December whether Beijing had “ditched” Caracas.

In an editorial Saturday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said the U.S. incursion and seizure of Mr. Maduro “once again lays bare Washington’s reliance on unilateral force to shape outcomes beyond its borders.”

“This aggression also hollows out decades of U.S. rhetoric positioning America as the guardian of international rules,” the editorial said. “By bypassing the United Nations Security Council, Washington has again acted in direct opposition to the tenets of international law.”

The Global Times, a nationalist state-run tabloid that focuses on foreign affairs, said “the abruptness and unprecedented nature of the arrest of another country’s leader in the post-Cold War era caught global media, experts and political figures by surprise.”

While state media largely skirted mention of a potential Chinese response or how the Venezuela operation might change Beijing’s geopolitical calculus, users on Chinese social media were quick to draw parallels between strikes on Caracas and a potential future action against Taiwan.

Days before the U.S. attack on Venezuela, Washington was denouncing Chinese war games around Taiwan, the autonomous, democratically ruled island claimed by Beijing as part of its territory.

Those drills were aimed at practising a potential blockade of Taiwan, cutting Taipei off from international support in a way that could create a window for regime change in China’s favour, either peacefully or by staging a decapitation strike against the island’s leadership.

Lev Nachman, a Taipei-based scholar and co-author of Taiwan: A Contested Democracy Under Threat, said he was “horrified that the United States continues to set precedent to take unilateral action against Taiwan.”

“I do not believe that America’s actions will speed up Xi’s goals to invade Taiwan or take similar action against Lai,” Mr. Nachman wrote Saturday. “But if that day comes, Trump is giving Xi all the international precedent he needs.”

Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the U.S.-based Brookings Institution, cautioned against drawing too many analogies between the Venezuela action and a potential future Taiwan conflict however.

“I don’t expect today’s events in Venezuela will dramatically alter Beijing’s calculus on Taiwan,” Mr. Hass wrote on social media. “Beijing has not refrained from kinetic or other actions on Taiwan out of deference to international law and norms.”

As other analysts pointed out, China has always insisted that Taiwan is part of its sovereign territory, and therefore an internal affair. Moreover, if Beijing were to invade, Mr. Hass added, “America’s ability to mobilize an international response will not hinge on America’s record of fidelity to international law.”

“Most of rest of world already sees the U.S. as inconsistent adherents to international law,” he said.

One way the U.S. operation against Venezuela could play in China’s immediate favour would be to bolster Beijing’s case that it, rather than the U.S., is the responsible global superpower, building on support and good will in parts of the developing world that have been burned by Mr. Trump’s trade war.

William Yang, a China analyst at the International Crisis Group, predicted Beijing’s “immediate reaction to the U.S. capture of Maduro would be to use the moment to contrast itself against Washington’s way of carrying out the mission and present itself as the defender of international law and the rules-based order.”