China today urged Donald Trump to stay away from Venezuela’s oil after the US said it would run the country following an operation to capture president Nicolas Maduro.
Its call came as the captured Venezuelan leader was driven to a court in New York this morning after being indicted alongside his wife on charges of ‘narco-terrorism’.
The US president revealed American oil firms will ‘go in and rebuild this system’ as he signalled a plan to take control of huge and largely untapped reserves in Venezuela.
But China, which has invested billions in Venezuela’s oil industry, claimed agreements it has with Caracas over oil exports from the country would be ‘protected by law’.
China, an ally of Venezuela, also called for Mr Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores to be ‘immediately released’ in a strong condemnation of the operation over the weekend.
China’s foreign ministry said the move was a ‘clear violation of international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter’.
Officials in Beijing also called on Washington to ‘cease efforts to subvert the Venezuelan government and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation’.
Just last Friday, Mr Maduro was at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas meeting Qiu Xiaoqi, special representative of the Chinese government on Latin American affairs.
Meanwhile more than a dozen oil tankers loaded with Venezuelan crude and fuel were revealed to have fled the country in an attempt to evade American forces.
Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro and Chinese official Qiu Xiaoqi in Caracas last Friday
Nicolas Maduro arrives at Downtown Manhattan Heliport today as he heads towards the Daniel Patrick Manhattan United States Courthouse for an initial appearance to face federal charges
Mark Almond, director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford, claimed Mr Trump’s move to take over the country’s oil production means he ‘now feeds refineries in Louisiana hungry for a special type of heavy oil in which Venezuela specialises, and he controls the supply that China had been leaning on’.
Writing in The Mail on Sunday, he added: ‘It might be a global power ready to rival the US, but China is energy poor with not nearly enough deposits of gas and oil to keeps its factory furnaces ablaze. Now, China will have to find another source of cheap oil.’
China’s top diplomat also accused the US of acting like a ‘world judge’ by seizing Mr Maduro to put him on trial, with Beijing set to confront Washington at the UN over the move’s legality.
‘We have never believed that any country can act as the world’s police, nor do we accept that any nation can claim to be the world’s judge,’ China’s foreign minister Wang Yi told his Pakistani counterpart during a meeting in Beijing yesterday, referring to ‘sudden developments in Venezuela’ without directly mentioning the US.
He added: ‘The sovereignty and security of all countries should be fully protected under international law.’
Eric Olander, co-founder of the China-Global South Project, said: ‘There isn’t much in the way of material support that China can offer Venezuela at this time, but rhetorically, Beijing will be very important when it leads the effort at the UN and with other developing countries to rally opinion against the US.
‘What we’ve seen in the cases of Zimbabwe and Iran, both sanctioned by the West, is that China demonstrates its commitment to these relationships through trade and investment, even under difficult circumstances.’
Venezuela and China’s relationship deepened under Hugo Chavez, who took power in 1998 and became Beijing’s closest ally in Latin America, distancing his country from Washington while lauding the Chinese Communist Party’s governance model.
The close relationship continued after Mr Chavez died in 2013 and Mr Maduro became leader, even enrolling his son at the top-ranking Peking University in 2016.
Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro with US law enforcement in New York on Saturday
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian at a Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference in Beijing yesterday in which China reiterated Beijing’s stance against the US military action
US president Donald Trump speaks with reporters while in flight on Air Force One yesterday
In return, Beijing poured money into Venezuela’s oil refineries and infrastructure, providing an economic lifeline as the US and its allies tightened sanctions from 2017.
China purchased around $1.6billion worth of goods in 2024, according to Chinese customs data, the latest full-year figures available. Oil made up about half the total.
‘It was a big blow to China, we wanted to look like a dependable friend to Venezuela,’ said a Chinese government official briefed on a meeting between Mr Maduro and Mr Qiu, hours before the Venezuelan president was captured.
Other countries such as Russia and Iran, which also have longstanding ties with Mr Maduro’s government, have also condemned the US operation.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei said: ‘The president of a country and his wife were abducted. It’s nothing to be proud of; it’s an illegal act.
‘As the Venezuelan people have emphasised, their president must be released.’
Iran also said its relations with close ally Venezuela remained unchanged despite the US taking Mr Maduro to New York for trial.
‘Our relations with all countries, including Venezuela, are based on mutual respect and will remain so,’ Mr Baqaei said. ‘We are in contact with the Venezuelan authorities.’
Iran, which the US bombed last year, additionally said it ‘strongly condemns the US military attack on Venezuela and a flagrant violation of the country’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity’.
Meanwhile Russia demanded the US leadership ‘reconsider its position and release the legally elected president of the sovereign country and his wife’.
And North Korea’s foreign ministry denounced the American capture of Mr Maduro as a ‘serious encroachment of sovereignty’.
A flame burning natural gas is seen at an heavy-crude treatment plant operated by Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, in the oil rich Orinoco belt, near Cabrutica at the state of Anzoategui
Mexico, which Mr Trump has also threatened with military force over drug trafficking, strongly condemned the US military action in Venezuela, saying it ‘seriously jeopardises regional stability’.
And Colombian President Gustavo Petro – whose country neighbours Venezuela – called the US action an ‘assault on the sovereignty’ of Latin America which would lead to a humanitarian crisis.
Mr Maduro is expected to appear in a New York court today, after being seized in Caracas in the shock US military operation that paved the path for Washington’s plans to dominate the oil-rich country.
Mr Maduro faces narcotrafficking charges along with his wife, who was forcibly taken out of Caracas in the US assault which involved commandos, bombing by jet planes, and a massive naval force.
When asked what he needs from Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez, Mr Trump said: ‘We need total access. We need access to the oil and other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country.’
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and more Venezuelan crude in the market could exacerbate oversupply concerns and add to recent pressure on prices.
But analysts say that alongside other major questions about the South American country’s future, substantially lifting its oil production will not be easy, quick or cheap.
Mr Trump also announced yesterday that the US was ‘in charge’ of the South American nation.
About a dozen tankers loaded with Venezuelan crude and fuel departed in recent days from the country’s waters in dark mode – seemingly breaking a strict blockade imposed by the US, according to monitoring service TankerTrackers.com.
Pipelines and an oil pump jack are seen in an oil field in Cabimas, Venezuela (file photograph)
All the identified departed vessels are under US sanctions. A separate group of ships, also under sanctions, left the country in recent days empty after discharging imports or completing domestic transportation trips.
The departures could be a relief for Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA, which had accumulated a very large inventory of floating storage amid the U. blockade, begun last month, dragging the country’s oil exports to a standstill.
Oil exports are Venezuela’s main source of revenue. An interim government now led by oil minister and vice president Ms Rodriguez will need the income to finance spending and secure domestic stability in the country.
At least four of the departed tankers left Venezuelan waters through a route north of Margarita Island after briefly stopping near the country’s maritime border, TankerTrackers.com said, after identifying the vessels is satellite images.
A source with knowledge of the departures’ paperwork claimed that at least four supertankers had been cleared by Venezuelan authorities in recent days to leave Venezuelan waters in dark mode.
It was not immediately clear if the departures happened in defiance of the US measures.
Mr Trump said on Saturday that an ‘oil embargo’ on Venezuela was in full force, but added that under an incoming transition Venezuela’s largest customers, including China, would keep receiving oil.
