What China wants: A world split in two

America says its actions in Venezuela are about restoring order in its own backyard. To Beijing, they look like confirmation that Washington is sliding toward a world divided into spheres of influence. This is precisely the kind of global order China wants.

Ousted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife appeared in a New York federal court Monday and pleaded not guilty to multiple narco-terrorism charges, after they were seized by US forces in Caracas on Saturday. Few in the country Maduro ruled with an iron first will mourn his removal. President Donald Trump can credibly claim, as my colleagues have written, that he’s brought down a blatantly illegitimate autocrat who stole an election, crushed dissent and ran an oil-rich economy into the ground, while trafficking in narcotics.

Maduro’s exit also looks like a setback for China, Washington’s strategic rival. Beijing is a big buyer of Venezuelan crude — with the caveat that the South American nation only accounted for about 4% of its imports last year — and its biggest creditor. That oil trade now looks uncertain. Trump has said Washington will oversee Caracas’ oil industry and sell its output to global buyers, but hasn’t clarified whether Beijing will be on that list. This complicates China’s strategy in Latin America, where it plans to increase investment.


The timing of the former president’s capture also appears to have been a significant intelligence failure for Beijing. A high-level delegation from China met with Maduro in Caracas just hours before the raid, exposing deep gaps in the world’s second-largest economy’s ability to gauge strategic threats.

Still, the longer-term geopolitical odds could tilt in China’s favor if Washington becomes distracted by Venezuela. This could provide Beijing the time and space to consolidate pressure in the Indo-Pacific, particularly around Taiwan and the South China Sea, two of its most sensitive strategic concerns.

The idea of a world divided into spheres of influence is deeply appealing to Beijing. It chips away at the post-World War II order the US helped to build and enforce, and aligns with President Xi Jinping’s long-held view that the world is undergoing “great changes unseen in a century.”

American officials increasingly appear to be singing that tune. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that the US must reassert influence close to home and push back against external powers operating in its backyard. “We are not going to be able to allow in our hemisphere a country that becomes a crossroads for the activities of all of our adversaries around the world,” he said.

The administration’s recently released National Security Strategy echoes that logic. It pledges to restore American preeminence in its own region, to enforce what it calls a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine — the 1823 declaration warning European powers from encroaching in the Americas, invoked to justify US interventions in the region.

Beijing has already begun exploiting the moment. It has condemned US actions as a violation of international law, and called for the release of Maduro and his wife. That rhetoric is aimed squarely at audiences in the Global South, where countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia have also issued firm statements ranging from expressions of grave concern to outright censure.

America’s actions have given China “cheap ammunition” to push back the next time Washington reprimands its actions in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, notes William Yang, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. None of this means that China will suddenly be emboldened to launch a war over Taiwan, the self-ruled island it claims as its own. Beijing’s decisions are driven primarily by military capability and domestic political calculations, not events halfway across the world.

But an America increasingly preoccupied with its own hemisphere will give it more confidence to intensify gray-zone pressure across the Indo-Pacific. Last month’s military exercises around Taiwan were a reminder that the People’s Liberation Army is rehearsing blockade scenarios, testing Taipei’s response while staying just below the threshold of open conflict.

The US-China rivalry in the Indo-Pacific has already pushed Asia’s middle powers such as Japan, Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand to increase defense spending and deepen regional cooperation. Japan has committed to a historic military buildup, including counterstrike capabilities. Meanwhile, South Korea is strengthening its deterrence posture and India is investing in naval power to expand its reach. These moves complicate the idea of a world divided into compliant regions, governed by strong powers while smaller ones acquiesce.

The world emerging under Trump increasingly resembles a modern version of the law of the jungle, where might-equals-right determines which power wins. That’s a game China knows how to play all too well.



The views published here are the author's own, and not EconomicTimes.com's