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.
MAGAs keep saying that this isn’t about the oil because the oils fields are inoperative, and it will be at least a decade, and billions of dollars before they are getting any oil out of the ground.
Meanwhile, we’ve been hijacking giants tankers full of oil, and China, and other countries, have been buying billions of dollars worth every year.
It seems like there is plenty of oil coming out of Venezuela, and always has been. This is all about oil, and that’s all there is to it. They can deny it, but they are proven virtuoso liars, and we don’t have to believe them.