When Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, he forged strategic alliances with China and Russia to promote his vision of a multipolar world and counteract the influence of the United States.
These relationships were key in 2019, when Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, faced a serious crisis of legitimacy after elections marked by accusations of fraud: both powers then rejected international recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who had declared himself interim president.
Beijing and Moscow even gave economic and military support to Maduro.
Six years later, Maduro is going through a new crisis—the most serious in his more than 12 years of government—but neither China nor Russia have shown a willingness to support him beyond general calls for calm and non-interference.
Everything indicates that, this time, Maduro is alone against what he has denounced as an attempt to overthrow him.
Since September, Donald Trump’s government has deployed some 15,000 soldiers and more than 20% of the US Navy’s combat capacity in Caribbean waters off the coast of Venezuela, including the largest and most sophisticated aircraft carrier in the world.
Trump has said that his goal is to combat drug trafficking, but analysts agree with Maduro that Washington’s ultimate goal is probably to promote regime change in Venezuela.
A support that is limited to rhetoric
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Fernando Reyes Matta, director of the Center for China Studies at the Andrés Bello University of Chile, estimates that Maduro’s situation is critical.
“He has little time left. The support he had in the past is no longer there in real terms, beyond certain rhetorical statements,” he tells BBC Mundo.
At the end of October, Maduro requested assistance from Russia and China to improve his military capabilities, as initially reported. The Washington Post.
The American newspaper obtained internal documents from the US government at the end of October that state that Venezuela specifically asked Moscow for help to repair Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets, improve radar detection systems and deliver missiles.
Shortly after the report came to light, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov was questioned about whether Moscow was providing aid to Caracas. He limited himself to saying that his country maintained constant contact with Venezuela and refused to give more details.
For her part, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, expressed at a press conference her “firm support for the Venezuelan authorities in the defense of national sovereignty.”
“Direct aggression will aggravate the situation instead of resolving problems that have every potential to be resolved legally and diplomatically within the legal framework,” Zakharova added.
And this December 7, the Russian news agency Tass reported that Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov, told him that the country stands “shoulder to shoulder” with Venezuela.
“”We express our solidarity with Venezuela, with whom we recently signed a strategic partnership and cooperation agreement. ” quotes the Tass agency.
“We support Venezuela, as it supports us, in many areas. In these difficult times, we stand in solidarity with Caracas and the Venezuelan leaders. We hope that the Trump administration refrains from aggravating the situation and leading it to a large-scale conflict. We urge it to do so,” he adds.
But these reactions are far from what happened in 2018, when Russia sent more than 100 Russian pilots and soldiers and two nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela as a demonstration of force and support against the United States, which had just ignored the results favorable to Maduro given by the National Electoral Council, controlled by people close to him.
Other priorities
Reyes Matta, who was also Chile’s ambassador to China during the first government of Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), assures that Venezuela stopped being an important issue for Beijing and Moscow in the current geopolitical context and even more so after Trump’s arrival in the White House.
“There are no reasons today for either Russia or China to risk defending Venezuela taking into account other problems they have, such as Russia and its war in Ukraine and China trying to coexist on the international stage with President Trump,” he adds.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has poured enormous financial resources and military assets into a war that has drained its finances and military.
It has also triggered a series of sanctions from the West.
All of this means less money and weapons for ideological allies who have likely taken a backseat to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Neither Russia is going to risk receiving more sanctions than it already has, nor is China going to risk having more tariffs imposed on it for defending Maduro,” Vladimir Rouvinski, director of the Politics and International Relations Laboratory (PoInt) at the Icesi University in Cali, Colombia, tells BBC Mundo.
Relations between the United States and China have been marked by trade tensions since Donald Trump took office and announced tariffs on multiple countries.
Although the situation seemed complicated, a meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping at the end of October in South Korea, which was described as positive by both leaders, opened the door to possible agreements.
The US halved a 20% tariff on Chinese goods linked to controlling the flow of fentanyl, although tariffs on other Chinese goods remain, averaging close to 50%.
For Beijing, defending Maduro probably means putting these advances at risk without many benefits beyond ideological ones.
China has reassessed its support for Maduro
According to leaked official documents obtained by The Washington Post, Maduro also sent a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, requesting “greater military cooperation” to counter “the escalation between the United States and Venezuela.”
In the letter, Maduro asked the Chinese government to accelerate the production of radar detection systems by Chinese companies, presumably so that Venezuela could improve its capabilities.
For many years, Chinese loans to Venezuela were essential for investment and the development of the country’s economy.
In fact, from the mid-2000s to 2016, Venezuela was the main recipient of Chinese loans in Latin America.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Caracas received approximately between US$50,000 and US$60,000 million in financing during that period.
These loans, which represented more than 40% of the total in Latin America coming from China, turned Venezuela into a key element for the expansion of Chinese influence in Latin America.
But the country’s economic collapse and the deterioration of its oil industry have caused Beijing to reassess how much support it wants to give Nicolás Maduro.
In recent years, China has reduced the provision of new loans and is now mainly focused on ensuring the repayment of previous loans.
Rouvinsky estimates that China does not want to damage in advance the relationship it may have with a future transitional government.
“I think China is willing to negotiate with any government that eventually replaces Maduro and believes that supporting Maduro too much now could have negative consequences when the regime falls,” he adds.
Recently, in his radio program Con Maduro, the Venezuelan president assured that China “publicly supports Venezuela’s right to exercise its sovereignty and peace.”
“Maduro is completely alone”
The director of the Center for Latin American Studies on China at the UAB, Fernando Reyes Matta, maintains that the political events that occurred in Venezuela last year have also influenced the change in Moscow and Beijing’s position regarding the country.
“I do not believe that either country is willing to support a regime that has so little internal support. Furthermore, both Russia and China know that the last presidential election had very obvious fraudulent characteristics,” he says.
Last year’s July election was marked by serious allegations of fraud. Although the National Electoral Council (CNE), controlled by the ruling party, proclaimed the victory of Nicolás Maduro, it did not present evidence or disaggregated data as had been done in previous processes.
Added to this was that the opposition, led by María Corina Machado—recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—published election records indicating that the opposition candidate Edmundo González had won.
“This time, Maduro is completely alone,” underlines Russian political scientist Vladimir Rouvinski. “Russia and China may continue to criticize US intervention, but they are not willing to go further,” he concludes.
The response of both countries makes it clear that the government of Nicolás Maduro can no longer count on the absolute support of these two powers that played an important role in past crises.
This time, the survival of Maduro and his circle will likely depend more on his own ability to resist and how determined President Donald Trump is to continue his campaign against him, as he claims to be the leader of the Cartel of the Suns, a group that has recently been designated as a terrorist organization.
