February 1, 2026: China had an interesting reaction to the January 3 ^rd U.S. raid in Venezuela that captured dictator Nicholas Maduro and his wife. There were also air strikes on coastal facilities that supported cocaine and other drugs being exported to the United States. Another aspect of the raid was that it occurred shortly after Maduro met with Chinese diplomat Qiu Xiaoqi to discuss matters of mutual interest. China buys 68 percent of Venezuelan oil at a special, for China only, discount price. That’s only four percent of Chinese oil imports and is easily replaced by oil from other sources. In the last 19 years China has loaned Venezuela $63 billion. Venezuela has a current GDP of $82 billion. In 2012 the GDP was $373 billion. Nicolas Maduro, and his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez were not good for the economy.

China has exploited Venezuela as well as invested in the country. China has done the same to five other South American nations. Many of the investments involved Chinese personnel building and managing new port facilities in South America. China sees its South American investments as something worth defending. Chinese wargames often involve Chinese forces operating in South America. To assist in that sort of thing, China has long maintained an ELINT/Electronic Intelligence operation in Cuba. This involves Chinese activities at several locations in Cuba. The recent American military operations in Venezuela involve blocking free shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Since Cuba is currently broke, with periodic blackouts when the national electric power system fails, the loss of Venezuelan oil is a major problem.

The current American president is pursuing a policy of increasing American economic, military and diplomatic activity in South America. This may also address the continuing plundering of offshore South American fishing grounds by fleets of Chinese trawlers. That would be part of the effort to keep the Chinese and Russians out. China plans to challenge that by selling Air Defense systems to Cuba and Columbia. This is happening despite the fact that Chinese Air Defense systems already in Venezuela were ineffective against the Americans raid that captured Maduro and his wife, killing 32 Cuban bodyguards and some civilians along the way.