The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued an incensed statement on Saturday condemning an American law enforcement action in Caracas that resulted in the capture of longtime Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro – whose last public appearance was a meeting with top Chinese diplomats.
President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that American forces had entered Venezuela to capture Maduro and his wife, “first combatant” Cilia Flores, on a litany of charges linked to drug trafficking and support for terrorism. The United States and law enforcement officials in several other Latin American countries have for years identified Maduro as the head of the Cartel de los Soles, an international cocaine trafficking syndicate run out of the Venezuelan military. Maduro also used his leverage as dictator to aid the expansion in the hemisphere of activities by terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and state sponsors of terrorism such as Cuba and Venezuela .
The Chinese Communist Party was among the most vocal supporters of the Venezuelan narco-regime, reportedly benefiting through the large-scale purchase of sanctioned oil. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned various Chinese companies less than a week ago for benefiting from the illicit traffic of Venezuelan oil.
Beijing, with its official presumably still in Caracas, took no actions to defend Maduro, but published a concerned statement through its foreign ministry.
“China is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the US’ blatant use of force against a sovereign state and action against its president,” the Foreign Ministry said through a spokesperson. “Such hegemonic acts of the US seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region. China firmly opposes it.”
“We call on the US to abide by international law and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and stop violating other countries’ sovereignty and security,” the statement concluded.
In reality, Nicolás Maduro has not been the president of Venezuela since 2018, when he organized a sham presidential election he lost and the National Assembly used its constitutional power to declare a rupture in the democratic order and install Juan Guaidó as interim president. Guaidó, while constitutionally the president, exercised no power during his tenure and was removed in 2022. Maduro held another sham election in 2024 that he lost to former diplomat Edmundo González; the socialist regime claimed that Maduro had won the election, but published no evidence of this. González, with the aid of the most popular politician in the country, former lawmaker María Corina Machado, assembled teams on the ground to count votes and published local tallies online, showing Maduro’s overwhelming defeat.
The facts surrounding the illegitimacy of Maduro’s rule were entirely absent on Saturday in Chinese state media coverage of his arrest. Speaking to “Chinese experts,” the state-run Global Times propaganda outlet declared that President Trump and his team had acted recklessly and violated international law. China regularly violates international law through illegal fishing, the invasion of neighboring countries’ waters, the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people of occupied East Turkistan, and crimes such as intellectual property theft, support for the fentanyl trade, and live organ harvesting.
“Overthrowing the Maduro government has long been an objective pursued by the US, but capturing a sitting head of state in this manner is highly unusual and can be described as reckless,” one Chinese expert, researcher Lü Xiang, was quoted as saying. “It not only violates international law, but also lacks any legal basis under US domestic law.”
Lü fretted that the capture was a “revival of a new Monroe Doctrine,” a statement aligning with President Trump’s explicit declaration that the doctrine, which asserts that foreign powers should be allowed to peddle influence in the Western Hemisphere, is in vigor.
Another “expert,” Fudan University’s Jiang Shixue, accused Washington of seeking “control over Venezuela’s vital petroleum resources.” Trump told reporters during his news conference on Saturday that U.S. oil companies would indeed be operating in Venezuela – to help rebuild the decrepit oil industry beleaguered by almost three decades of socialism and currently largely under the control of Iranian engineers, accused of several major environmental disasters.
China’s objections notably follow a warm meeting between Maduro and genocidal dictator Xi Jinping’s special envoy, Qui Xiaoqi, in the Miraflores Palace on Friday.
“I maintained a great meeting with Qui Xiaoqi,” Maduro wrote on social media on Friday. “We reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that advances and strengthens in diverse areas for the construction of a multipolar world of development and peace.”
President Trump announced Maduro’s capture on Saturday morning, noting that the U.S. military successfully executed a “large scale strike” in Caracas to ensure the Venezuelan armed forces could not protect Maduro. During his press conference later in the day, Trump said that Maduro and his wife Flores attempted to flee into a safe room, got to the door, but were apprehended before they could hide.
Addressing the Chinese meeting, Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday that he did not believe there would “be a problem” with China over the oil situation.
“I know nothing about that,” he said about Maduro’s last meeting. “But I have a very good relationship with President Xi, and there’s not going to be a problem. And they’re going to get oil. We’re going to allow people to have oil.
“But we can’t take a chance of — after having done this incredible thing last night — of letting somebody else take over where we have to do it again,” he said.
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