China loses key regional ally and oil source in Maduro’s ouster

China is losing a key regional ally and major source of oil from the U.S. capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, whose leftist regime was a hoped-for part of Beijing’s global expansion initiatives, security experts say.

The U.S. military operation took place early Saturday, shortly after a delegation of Chinese officials met with Mr. Maduro in Caracas. Analysts say his ouster highlights the limits of China’s power.

President Trump sidestepped a question about the impact on China’s oil imports from Venezuela after the daring commando capture of Mr. Maduro, dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve.

Asked about the impact of the military strike on U.S. relations with China, Russia and Iran, nations that had close ties to the Maduro regime, Mr. Trump said the U.S. would not block them from future Venezuelan oil sales after “we get things straightened out.”

“But in terms of other countries that want oil, we’re in the oil business, we’re going to sell it to them,” he said.

Beijing denounced the military operation as a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law and called for the U.S. to release the autocratic ruler and his wife, Cilia Flores, who are in U.S. custody in New York City.

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian declined to say whether the operation will result in consequences for U.S.-China relations if appeals for the couple’s release are ignored.

No Chinese nationals in Venezuela were harmed during the military strikes, Mr. Lin said.

Cuba’s government said more than 30 of its military and security personnel in the country were killed.

Cuban security personnel were said to be providing security for the Venezuelan leader. The casualties were likely the result of a U.S. bombing on a barracks in Venezuela for the Cubans and of fire from Delta Force commandos.

A delegation of Chinese officials led by Beijing’s senior envoy for Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, met with Mr. Maduro hours before the U.S. raid.

The timing of the military action during the Chinese delegation’s visit fueled speculation that the Pentagon may have launched the strike amid fears that Beijing had learned of plans for the raid through its extensive intelligence networks and may have warned Mr. Maduro.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the collapse of the Maduro regime is unwelcome news for Beijing, which he said is “no doubt furious and humiliated at having backed the wrong horse.”

“The fact that Maduro was hosting a Chinese delegation just hours before his capture couldn’t have been more fitting,” Mr. Pompeo said.

China is losing a key source of cheap and illegal oil as well as a chief strategic partner in Latin America, Mr. Pompeo said.

“That means they can no longer use Venezuela as a beachhead for intelligence operations inside the United States or malign influence activities across the Western Hemisphere,” he said. “The message from President Trump couldn’t be clearer: The days of undermining America in our own hemisphere are over.”

The difficult part will be making sure Venezuela’s people will not be sold out to foreign dictators in the future, he added.

“So while Beijing is certainly sustaining some real injuries from this operation, ensuring that Venezuela’s new government reflects the will of the people is the only way to ensure that China doesn’t end up back in Latin America,” Mr. Pompeo told The Washington Times.

Venezuelan oil

China’s oil purchases from Venezuela amounted to about 568,000 barrels per day last year and spiked to more than 900,000 barrels a day in the final months of 2025, according to oil industry reports. The imports accounted for about 10% of China’s oil imports and were sold at discounted rates.

Chinese state-owned oil companies, China National Petroleum Corp. and Sinopec Group, have invested an estimated $2.1 billion in Venezuela’s oil sector since 2016 and continue to operate in the country.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that the U.S. quarantine on Venezuelan oil shipments will provide a strategic lever for influencing the current government to make democratic reforms.

Western oil companies, which Mr. Rubio described as “non-Russian, non-Chinese companies,” are expected to assist in restoring the country’s oil infrastructure.

“Our refineries in the Gulf Coast of the United States are the best in terms of refining this heavy crude, and there’s actually been a shortage of heavy crude around the world, so I think there would be tremendous demand and interest from private industry if given the space to do it, if given the opportunity to do it,” Mr. Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Chevron, the sole U.S. oil company in Venezuela, is expected to be first in line for oil redevelopment.

Last month, China issued a government white paper outlining its strategy for Latin America that called for expanding ties to the region as part of its vision of a “shared future.” The strategy calls for several programs identified in the white paper under vague initiatives called “solidarity,” development, civilization, peace, and people-to-people connectivity.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies described the policy paper as an affirmation of China’s intent to continue building an alternative world order that is more friendly to China’s authoritarian system of government.

“The demise of Maduro deals a heavy blow to China’s hemisphere strategy of propping up Venezuela as the Iran of Latin America to sponsor chaos and instability in order to pin down the U.S. in its backyard, away from America’s focus on defeating China’s aggression in West Pacific,” said Miles Yu, a former State Department policymaker on China.

Strategic partnership

The impact of the Maduro ouster will not be limited to China but will affect the Beijing-centered coalition of rogue states such as Russia, Iran and Cuba.

Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a pact with Mr. Maduro in Moscow in May, known as the China-Venezuela All-Weather Strategic Partnership.

The military operation revealed to Mr. Xi, as the Chinese Communist Party’s supreme leader, that U.S. military power “humiliatingly invalidated” Venezuela’s Russian-made S-300 air defense system, China’s deployed and supposedly fail-proof JY-27 air defense array radar, and Iran’s Shahed drones in Caracas during the nighttime raid, Mr. Yu said.

June Teufel Dreyer, a China expert and political science professor at the University of Miami, said China has been a staunch supporter of sovereign rights even as it makes claims that run counter to the sovereignty of other states.

The attack on Venezuela without a declaration of war is technically a violation of sovereignty.

“So will China call off, or at least postpone, Xi’s meeting with Trump or be seen to acquiesce in this attack on the soil of a ‘Global South’ partner and Belt and Road Initiative member?” Ms. Dreyer said.

As for China’s call for a United Nations Security Council meeting on the U.S. operation, Ms. Dreyer said the U.N. body can be expected to pontificate on the matter, and China and Russia may well condemn the U.S., something that could sour U.S.-China relations.

Ms. Dreyer said prosecuting Mr. Maduro will take time and the judicial system in New York, which has favored defendants, could result in the dictator’s winning the drug trafficking case against him and emerging stronger.

Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism conspiracy charges in federal court in Manhattan on Monday.

“While Trump said [interim Venezuelan President] Delcy Rodriguez told him she’d be cooperative, her words since then haven’t been particularly conciliatory. Will she continue his friendly policy to Beijing?” Ms. Dreyer said.

Also, if U.S. efforts to revive the Venezuelan economy falter, China could claim victory. “Beijing may have lost Maduro in person, but his legacy and value to Beijing could live on,” she said.

John Tkacik, a former State Department China policymaker, said he believes it was no coincidence that the last foreign delegation to meet Mr. Maduro was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat.

“As Maduro gleefully tweeted on Telegram, he looked forward to upending America’s strategic posture in Latin America,” said Mr. Tkacik, noting that Mr. Maduro reaffirmed his commitment to the strategic relationship with China.

“Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest,” he said.

“I suspect the president may have been a bit ticked off, and it makes me wonder whether there was more to his annoyance with Maduro than just narco-boats running cocaine. One doesn’t need a fully loaded carrier task force to sink cocaine runners, but one does need a fleet to deter Cuba, Russia and China from establishing permanent concrete bases in America’s backyard,” he said.

Mr. Tkacik said he suspects Mr. Qiu and his delegation were rousted from bed by bomb strikes, power outages and an inability to communicate on their mobile phones or laptops.

‘Preemption at its finest’

Mr. Rubio said the operation was designed mainly as a law enforcement operation to halt drugs from what he said were “narco-terrorists” led by Mr. Maduro.

The secretary of state, who is also the White House national security adviser, said curbing the Iranian and Hezbollah presence in Venezuela was a key factor in ousting Mr. Maduro.

In December, Mr. Rubio said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has an “anchor presence” in Venezuela and its operatives are working with Hezbollah terrorists there.

Since 2020, Iranian weapons sales to Venezuela reportedly include Mohajer-6 unmanned aerial vehicles with ranges capable of targeting Florida or Navy ships in the Caribbean, according to Israel’s Alma Research and Education Center.

Iran also has transferred drone manufacturing facilities to Venezuela and sold Zolfaghar-class fast attack boats equipped with CM-90 anti-ship missiles.

Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell said the precision operation in Venezuela highlights the Trump administration’s new hemispheric defense, outlined in the recent White House National Security Strategy.

“The renewed American policy of defending the Western Hemisphere directly confronts the enduring threat of communist involvement and expansion in our hemisphere,” he said. “Most importantly, it is a direct refutation of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s most recent of four global initiatives, the Global Governance Initiative.”

Mr. Xi and the CCP recognize that arresting Mr. Maduro is a countermeasure to Chinese efforts to expand their influence over the hemisphere and fuel their economic machine through the unchallenged acquisition and exploitation of regional resources, Capt. Fanell said.

“This historic raid has upended Beijing’s plans and prevented the U.S. and the world from having to endure another ‘Missiles of October,’ as we experienced against the foothold of the Soviet Union’s military in the region in 1962,” he said. “This was preemption at its finest.”

China’s official Xinhua News Agency dubbed the U.S. attack “naked hegemonic behavior.”

“The US invasion has made everyone see more and more the fact that the so-called ‘rules-based international order’ in the mouth of the United States is actually just a ‘predatory order based on US interests,’” the agency stated.

The Chinese government-controlled social media site Weibo included numerous posts saying Beijing’s rulers should learn from Mr. Trump’s successful operation against Mr. Maduro.

The CCP-affiliated Global Times quoted Chinese military expert Zhang Junshe as saying the raid was a case study in military operations and highlighted American intelligence prowess.

“The U.S. has repeatedly conducted similar military operations to overthrow regimes,” he said. “Such operations are not just tactical operations, but they have deep political and strategic implications.”

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery said China was impacted in several ways, with no single issue overly significant but together producing an impactful result.

“It is really clear that Trump is hard to predict and we have moved from strategic ambiguity to strategic uncertainty under Trump. This could have a deterrent effect on a cautious, deliberative state like CCP,” said Mr. Montgomery, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

China accounted for 80% of Venezuela’s fossil fuel sales, and U.S. involvement in Venezuela’s internal affairs will render China slightly more vulnerable to the effects of international oil markets, he said.

“Finally, China looked impotent in the face of U.S. power in South America, a reminder to any South American partners that when it comes to hard power, there is only one big dog in the Western Hemisphere,” Mr. Montgomery said.