China’s plan to support Maduro’s corrupt Venezuela and counter US influence

China’s timing was impeccable.  

As soon as Nicolás Maduro declared victory in Venezuela’s July 28 elections, China congratulated him “on the smooth presidential election” and his “successful” win.

The election was anything but “smooth,” of course.

It was marred by allegations of widespread voter fraud, which have led to massive protests in Venezuela. 

The United States, along with most Latin American countries, have rejected Maduro’s claim of victory.

Not China.  

Even while the votes were still being counted, China’s Xi Jinping was congratulating Maduro on his “victory.”

Xi pledged that China would “firmly support Venezuela’s efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, national dignity and social stability, and its just cause of opposing foreign interference.”

Some analysts say that China, by endorsing Maduro, just wants to protect its $60 billion investment in Venezuela, as well as guarantee continued access to the country’s oil.

It is true that nearly half of all Chinese loans to Latin America and the Caribbean have gone to Venezuela, which does have the largest oil reserves in the world.

However, the rise of socialism in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and now Maduro has led to the collapse of the state-controlled oil industry.   

Oil production has fallen to a quarter of what it once was, and Venezuela’s GDP has followed suit.    

Venezuela defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2017 and suspended all loan repayments to its creditors, including China, in 2020. 

It has repeatedly gone hat in hand to China seeking to further defer its payments.

If China were primarily concerned about recovering its huge investment in Venezuela, it would support Maduro’s more market-oriented opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez.  

An end to radical socialism would jump-start economic growth, bring in foreign firms to restore oil production, and allow the country to repay its foreign loans, including those to China.

Instead, the CCP continues to loudly support a corrupt, socialist-minded autocrat who stole the recent election — even though this makes it increasingly unlikely that China will ever recover its $60 billion investment.

But payback, for Maduro’s Chinese Communist backers, is not just a matter of dollars and cents.  

China is constantly on the hunt for strategic allies — countries run by socialist, communist or authoritarian leaders who will support the CCP on the world stage.  

And in Venezuela they have found one.

When Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez first came to power, the CCP quickly recognized a kindred spirit.  

Chavez regarded Fidel Castro as a “father figure” and believed that Cuba’s problems stemmed not from communism, but from the American embargo.

As an added bonus, Chavez was fond of quoting from Mao’s Little Red Book, and sought to establish Maoist-style people’s communes in Venezuela to create new socialist men and women.  

He even went on national TV to read out loud from a 1950s propaganda tract called Inside a People’s Commune: Report from Chiliying (apparently not realizing that Mao’s failed experiment in collectivization cost 45 million lives).

Reading these tea leaves, China soon declared that Venezuela was its newest “strategic partner.”  

Its goal was to replicate in South America what it already had in Castro’s Cuba: A communist bastion allied with China and hostile to the United States.  

In the years since Chavez’s death, Maduro has stayed in China’s good graces by voting with it at the UN and backing its territorial claims.  

He has said that Taiwan is an inalienable province of China, endorsed its claim to the South China Sea and supported its persecution of Hong Kong’s democracy movement.

Most importantly for China, Maduro’s Venezuela not only serves as a strategic distraction in America’s own backyard — witness its recent threats against neighboring Guyana — it increases China’s military options in the event of war in the Pacific.  

All this is why, even though Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly defaulted on his China loans, Xi Jinping last September upgraded their relationship, making Venezuela not just a “strategic partner,” but an all-around “comprehensive strategic partner” of China’s.

China is supporting Maduro in Venezuela for the same reason it supports North Korea, Iran, Cuba and a handful of other despotic regimes around the world.

It creates strategic problems for the United States — and, in the case of Venezuela, problems very close to the homeland.

It’s hard to put a price tag on that. 

But the evidence shows that China is willing to pay at least $60 billion, if not a lot more.

Steven W. Mosher is president of the Population Research Institute and the author of “The Devil and Communist China: From Mao Down to Xi.”