In the wake of the U.S. military’s seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this month, a group of influential Chinese scholars has moved quickly into the spotlight, offering blunt assessments of Washington’s intentions and debating how Beijing should respond as great-power rivalry deepens in Latin America.
“From Washington’s perspective, any country in its ‘backyard’ that draws too close to U.S. competitors risks becoming a target for ‘correction’. Latin America may not become a powder keg for a world war, but Venezuela will certainly not be the only one,” said Zheng Yongnian, a prominent international relations professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a senior advisor to Beijing.
Zheng gave his assessment to Xiake Dao, a social media channel affiliated with the overseas edition of the Communist Party’s leading newspaper, People’s Daily, on January 4th, just one day after the U.S. military abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a daring nighttime raid.
A Warning
Wu Xinbo, a policy adviser to China’s Foreign Ministry, offered a similar assessment to China News Service, a state-affiliated media outlet.
“The U.S. move against Venezuela was also intended to send a warning to other regional rivals, signaling that they are expected to fall into line with Washington, while leaving open the possibility of further actions against other countries, such as Colombia,” Wu, who is also a professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, said last week.
So, what should Beijing do? Some prominent Chinese scholars also joined the discussion, urging Beijing to adopt a more assertive approach to safeguard its interests in Latin America and seize the moment to present itself as a more credible global leader.
Speaking to the nationalist, left-leaning news site Guancha on Saturday, Huang Jing, a former academic at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, urged Beijing to “brave the headwinds” and continue expanding investment in Latin America. Doing so would help counter Washington’s “rogue behavior” and “arrogance.”
“Do they think kidnapping Maduro will deter China from pursuing cooperation in Latin America? America is mistaken; we will still go. Beyond rare earths, we also possess countermeasures in key raw materials and industrial chain segments. China will never back down,” the scholar said.
Huang was expelled from Singapore in 2017 for acting as an “agent of influence” for a foreign country, reportedly China. He is now with Beijing Language and Culture University and denies all the espionage charges.
New Opportunities
And, this is a perfect timing for China to promote its global image, said Jiang Shixue, a central figure in China’s Latin American studies circle.
Trump’s attack, he said, has effectively promoted China to the international “moral high ground.”
“On the international moral high ground… we will enhance cooperation with every country, including the US… to establish a new international order,” Jiang, who is with Shanghai University, told Guancha in the same interview.
Sun Chenghao, a prominent academic figure in U.S.-China relationship studies at Tsinghua University, agreed that Beijing would step further away from the Washington-led global order.
Making his point, he dismissed the feasibility of the so-called “G2” arrangement, a concept revived by Trump last year that envisions global co-governance between Washington and Beijing in an article he wrote last week.
“For the United States, the core of regional order lies in exclusive security arrangements and the control of influence. For China, stability in regional order is rooted in inclusive participation, development dividends and risk management.
“This is not a simple divergence in policy preferences, but a direct collision between two fundamentally different understandings of international order,” Sun, who is with the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) of Tsinghua, one of China’s most active think tanks on the international stage, said.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? China is keeping a close eye on what is happening to Venezuela, from oil trade, debt, to geopolitical power games, but as usual, Beijing keeps a critical but restrained tone towards the U.S.’s involvement with a third country.
However, through scholars, who usually keep close ties with Beijing while enjoying certain academic freedom, we could try to understand Beijing’s opinion on critical issues and its what-to-do-next, and how China try to build its diplomatic narrative internationally by the Venezuela capture.
