By Michael Martina, Trevor Hunnicutt and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Among the many goals of the U.S. military operation last week that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was to send a message to China: stay away from America.
For at least two decades, Beijing has sought to expand its influence in Latin America, not only to seek economic opportunities, but also to gain a strategic foothold on the doorstep of its main geopolitical rival.
China’s progress – from satellite tracking stations in Argentina and a port in Peru to economic support for Venezuela – has been an irritant to successive US administrations, including that of Donald Trump.
Several Trump administration officials told Reuters that the US president’s move against Maduro was aimed in part at countering China’s ambitions, and Beijing’s days of leveraging cheap oil from Venezuela are over.
“WE DON’T WANT YOU THERE”
Trump made the message explicit Friday, expressing discomfort with China and Russia as “next-door neighbors” in a meeting with oil executives.
“I said to China and I said to Russia, ‘We get along very well with you, we like you very much, we don’t want you there, you’re not going to be there,'” Trump said. Now, he said, he will tell China that “we are open for business” and that they can “buy all the oil they want from us there or in the United States.”
The success of the early morning raid on January 3, in which US commandos entered Caracas and captured the Venezuelan president and his wife, was a blow to China’s interests and prestige.
The air defenses that US forces quickly disabled were supplied by China and Russia, and Trump said 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil under sanctions, much of it to Chinese ports, would now be sent to the US.
Analysts say Maduro’s capture exposed Beijing’s limited ability to exert its will in America.
The attack exposed the gulf between China’s “great power rhetoric and its real scale” in the Western Hemisphere, said Craig Singleton, a China expert at the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Beijing can protest diplomatically, but it cannot protect partners or assets once Washington decides to apply direct pressure,” he said.
In a statement to Reuters, China’s embassy in Washington said it rejected what it called “unilateral, illegal and acts of aggression” by the United States.
“China and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean maintain friendly exchanges and cooperation. No matter how the situation may evolve, we will continue to be friends and partners,” said Liu Pengyu, the embassy’s spokesman.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
But an administration official said that “China should be concerned about their position in the Western Hemisphere,” adding that their partners in the region increasingly realize that China cannot protect them.
TRUMP’S UNCLEAR CHINA POLICY
The Trump administration’s policy toward Beijing appears contradictory, with concessions aimed at calming a trade war on the one hand and more assertive US support for Taiwan on the other.
The operation in Venezuela appeared to tilt US policy in a more demanding direction.
Indeed, the timing of the American attack magnified Beijing’s embarrassment.
Just hours before he was toppled, Maduro met in Caracas with China’s special envoy for Latin America, Qiu Xiaoqi, his last public appearance before becoming a US captive.
The meeting, held in front of cameras even as US military forces were secretly preparing to launch their operation, suggested Beijing was blindsided, another US official said.
“If they had known, they wouldn’t have made so much public,” the US official told Reuters.
For years, Beijing has poured money into Venezuela’s oil refineries and infrastructure, providing an economic lifeline after the US and its allies tightened sanctions in 2017.
Along with Russia, China has also provided funds and equipment for Venezuela’s military, including radar networks, recently declared capable of detecting advanced US military aircraft. These systems did nothing to prevent a raid that US officials boasted was carried out without loss.
“Every nation around the world with Chinese defense equipment is checking their air defenses and asking how secure they really are against the United States,” said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank.
“It also notes how China’s diplomatic assurances to Iran and Venezuela resulted in zero meaningful protection when the US military arrived.”
China is now studying what went wrong with those defenses so it can support its own systems, according to a person briefed on their response.
CHINA IS FACED WITH OTHER REGIONAL RISKS
China may soon be under pressure elsewhere in the region.
It has sought to increase its influence in Cuba, and the US suspects that Beijing is running an intelligence-gathering operation there. China denies this, but last year promised better intelligence sharing with Cuba.
In the days after the Venezuela operation, Trump said that the US military intervention in Cuba, which has suffered due to the loss of Venezuelan oil, was probably unnecessary because it appeared ready to collapse on its own.
The Trump administration also continues to push Chinese companies away from port operations around the Panama Canal, the critical waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
A State Department official said the US “remains concerned” about Chinese influence near the canal, but appreciates Panama’s actions to reduce it, including leaving Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and auditing Panama’s port concession under contract with Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison.
While China may be on the back foot in the region, analysts warn that expanding US military involvement in Venezuela or deteriorating the security situation there could open a door for Beijing to reassert itself.
Daniel Russel, a former senior State Department official now at the Asia Society, said the dramatic shift in Washington under Trump from a rule-of-law stance to a “logic of spheres of influence focused on the Western Hemisphere” could play into China’s hands.
“Beijing wants Washington to accept that Asia is in China’s sphere and no doubt hopes that the US will lock in 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)