Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing cannot accept any country acting as the “world’s judge” after the United States captured Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The world’s second-largest economy has provided Venezuela with an economic lifeline since the U.S. and its allies ramped up sanctions in 2017, purchasing roughly $1.6 billion worth of goods in 2024, the most recent full-year data available.
Almost half of China’s purchases were crude oil, customs data shows, while its state-owned oil giants had invested around $4.6 billion in Venezuela by 2018, according to data from the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which tracks Chinese overseas corporate investment.
For anyone that thinks otherwise I guarantee this opens the door for China to begin their assault on Taiwan.
I’m not so sure it does. China is openly arguing against Trumps logic here, and the US just did demonstrate their military is still highly effective. The US seventh fleet hasn’t moved away from Taiwan, and Trump is clearly signalling he intends to keep China down.
I’d argue Xi is not happy Trump decided to actually do something like this, because it increased the risk of his plans with Taiwan as well now that the US is openly hostile and MAGA cheers it on.
China needed him to keep up the whole peace pretense and for MAGA to stay on board with that. Now that that’s gone, Trump has cleared the way for more military intervention.
From China’s perspective (and in theory, Taiwan’s perspective), invading Taiwan isn’t the same, because they both officially recognize One China, they just disagree about who’s in charge.
It would more akin to USA invading Puerto Rico, if the governor of PR asserted that they were in fact the proper leaders of the USA.
China also knows that other countries don’t exactly share that perspective. And it certainly won’t persuade Trump to not continue his anti-China policies.
MAGA is actually currently having a bit of a crisis of confidence. One of the promises Trump made was to stop the empire building and international interference. Now he’s going around causing an international incident every 45 minutes.
He has gone from saying that it was a single strike, to threatening more strikes against Venezuela, to threatening yet other countries in the last 24 hours.
In the USA, this is known as the “old switcheroo”.
Our politicians are infamous for doing the exact opposite of their platform.
For example, Reagan ran on sealing the borders and isolationism, only to declare amnesty for border hoppers and revel in international intervention.
Biden ran on increasing the minimum wage and other working class American concerns. Did he do this? No.
Our major parties aren’t actually concerned with their platforms, that’s performative.
The thing about bootlickers is that they love licking boot. As long as we’re winning and not losing, they’ll obediently fall in line. If things turn to shit, like it did in Iraq & Afghanistan, they’ll pretend they were always against it.
Maga gets hard from a show of strength, regardless of what form that takes. Even if it means cannibalising some of their own.
A random Xitter account crying foul isn’t a sign of widespread crisis of confidence. Only 6% of Republicans don’t approve of the Maduro kidnapping. His approval rating went up a bit since the kidnapping (38% -> 42%).
His base, by and large, support the warmongering.
cult members gotta cult
hmmmm sucker punching Venezuela here is not the flex you seem to think it is
the USA loves to bat weaker military powers around but they have been shown to be crushed by peasants in the long run…
In a matter of hours the US kidnapped the president of Venezuela, from his house on an army base, taking zero casualties. I don’t think there’s many militaries around that can beat that. It’s not the same as capturing Putin or Xi, sure, but it’s no trifle either.
you’ve never been to Venezuela, have you?
How many other heads of state do you remember being kidnapped from their palace, like from anywhere?
Of course Venezuela is no China or Russia and doesn’t compare to the US military, but they did have fairly modern Russian-made AA installations, all of which were successfully disabled or destroyed. And again: zero casualties.
You expect the operation would be successful, sure. But not as perfectly executed as it was.
how many have been tried?
Which is the point, it’s rarely tried because it’s very risky and unlikely to succeed or achieve your goals. The US military however was capable enough.
China claims Taiwan is theirs. Invading their own country to free it doesn’t really need any extra motive (even if there is) like what Trump needed, and is not playing world police.
100% agree, also China’s outrage is in name only. They provided 1.6 Billion in relief in the form of buying oil lol.
this is how things work, and some people seem incapable of understanding that.
You exercise a given power, and it gives others justification to use power in the same way. Laws be damned, the motivation is there.