US blows up China’s Latin America ambitions with Maduro Ouster

For years, China made inroads into Latin America, coaxing countries to abandon support for Taiwan with loans to build roads, ports and rail lines, making significant purchases of commodities such as soybeans and oil, and mining metals such as copper. Maduro was its most important ally, an anti-American leader with oil resources, earning Venezuela the rare distinction of an “all-weather" partnership—China’s highest diplomatic honor and a status held by no other country in Latin America.

Now, Beijing is no longer seeking to make new advances into Latin America in the near term, the people said. Instead, the discourse in China’s policymaking circles has shifted toward a potential trade-off: If the Western Hemisphere belongs to the Americans, then the Taiwan Strait belongs to the Chinese.

This calculation doesn’t mean China views the U.S. action in Venezuela as a green light for an immediate action to take back Taiwan, a democratically ruled island that Beijing views as a breakaway province. Rather, U.S. action against Maduro by force bolsters China as it gives priority to its “core interests," chiefly, bringing Taiwan under its control.

Chinese leaders had already been watching its influence in Latin America wane since President Trump took office a year ago.

Mexico recently imposed 50% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to align with Washington ahead of the high-stakes 2026 review of the North American free-trade pact. Panama has moved back into the U.S. orbit, withdrawing from Xi Jinping’s signature “Belt and Road" initiative while allowing rotating stays for U.S. military personnel at bases near the canal.

Even Honduras, which broke ties with Taiwan in 2023, is wobbling. The country’s shrimp industry has largely collapsed after failing to find the promised high-value markets in China, leading to significant domestic economic strain. Now, the president-elect, Nasry Asfura, who was endorsed by Trump, appears poised to fulfill a campaign promise of switching back to recognizing Taipei.

By December, as losses mounted in the region, Beijing issued a policy paper on Latin America suggesting it wouldn’t give up its ambitions in Latin America—a stance it can later use to extract concessions from Washington over Taiwan.

Then, just after New Year’s Day, Xi dispatched a special envoy to Venezuela with a mission to stop the bleeding.

According to the people familiar with the internal discussions, the goal for the envoy, Qiu Xiaoqi, was to secure what Beijing calls ji ben pan—the “strategic foundation" of China’s Latin America influence. This meant ensuring repayment of over $10 billion in outstanding debt owed by Venezuela and continued access to the world’s largest crude reserves.

Hours after Qiu met Maduro on Jan. 3, U.S. special-operations forces swooped into Caracas and, after an intense firefight, left with the country’s leader. With that, China’s decadelong project to secure a geostrategic foothold in America’s backyard was suddenly upended.

Now, China has a stack of toxic IOUs from Venezuela and is dealing with a regime that must put a priority on Trump, who has called himself the country’s “acting president."

Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodríguez, has met with Chinese Ambassador Lan Hu to offer reassurances on Beijing’s interests in the country. “No matter how the political situation in Venezuela evolves, China’s willingness to deepen practical cooperation with Venezuela in various fields will not change," Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal.

But the U.S. is already moving to reshape who controls Venezuela’s oil fields, where China has major interests.

Policy analysts close to the White House said the U.S. could replace Chinese infrastructure in Venezuela with American-led ventures. Essentially, the analysts said, the Trump administration could offer the new Venezuela government an opportunity for the U.S. to facilitate the restructuring of the country’s debt in exchange for exclusive rights for American companies to develop and extract its oil. This move would effectively sideline China.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said restoring American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere involves “enlisting established friends to help bolster mutual security in the region and cultivating new partners in the region."

Beijing’s goal is now defensive, said the people close to internal discussions: ensuring it isn’t erased from the ledger of Venezuela’s oil reserves entirely. This strategic retreat, these people said, might well be what China expects from the U.S. in the Taiwan Strait. Other enticements Chinese officials are considering, they said, involve Beijing’s potentially agreeing to purchase billions of dollars of long-term Treasurys.

The expected April summit between Xi and Trump in Beijing will likely offer the first real test of China’s new calculus.

The Chinese leadership is hoping to gauge whether Trump’s “America First" focus on the Western Hemisphere, the people said, is an opening for China to exert more control over its own periphery—or if the Venezuelan operation was merely the first chapter in a global reassertion of American power.

In Beijing, some hard-liners see Trump’s focus on the Western Hemisphere as a distraction that could leave a vacuum in the Asia-Pacific. The administration calls the policy the “Trump corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, a 19th-century warning to Europe from President James Monroe against new colonization in the Western Hemisphere, which he claimed as the U.S.’s exclusive domain.

Others argue that Trump’s authorization of the Maduro ouster proves that American interventionism is far from the “paper tiger" that Beijing’s hawks had hoped.

“The fall of Maduro has forced Beijing into a new respect for the Monroe Doctrine," said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center. “Trump’s willingness to use hard power proves that American resolve is a reality that Beijing must also take seriously."

While Trump himself has remained noncommittal regarding a military defense of Taiwan, his administration’s 2025 National-Security Strategy provides a clearer road map for U.S. interests. The document, released late last year, frames the island as an indispensable gear in the global economy. The strategy explicitly gives priority to “preserving military overmatch" to deter conflict, viewing Taiwan as a vital maritime gatekeeper in the First Island Chain that protects American trade from Chinese dominance.

Beijing’s new calculus will face its first major test later this month. Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has indicated a desire to attend Asfura’s inauguration in Honduras on Jan. 27, said people familiar with the matter. A spokesman at Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in December that Taipei remains open to engaging with all nations, including Honduras, without preconditions.

Beijing is closely watching whether the Trump administration will grant Lai a transit through the U.S. en route to Central America—a privilege denied to him last year.

One particular sting to Beijing came from Moscow. While the Chinese envoy was still drafting statements on Beijing’s “all-weather" partnership with Venezuela, Russia had already begun a quiet evacuation of its diplomats’ families in late December.

The people close to Beijing said that Moscow, which publicly denied a news report on the evacuation, didn’t inform the Chinese of its plan.

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com