China's President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump. Photo / Maxim Shemetov and Alex Wroblewski, AFP
The political upheaval in Venezuela and Iran - including military strikes, threatened and realised, by the Trump Administration - could provide opportunities for China to bolster its claim to being a reliable, stabilising alternative to a United States-led world order, analysts say.
The US military’s surprise operation in Venezuela led to the capture of President Nicolas Maduro and his removal to the US to face criminal charges, abruptly ending the rule of a leader Beijing had backed for years with loans, oil deals, and diplomatic support.
In Iran, mass protests were followed by a bloody crackdown, raising fresh questions about the durability of the Islamic republic and prompting US President Donald Trump to promise the Iranian people that the US would come to their aid.
The Pentagon began relocating personnel and equipment away from key facilities in the region, but Trump then appeared to step back from taking military action.
Beijing used the opportunity to differentiate its approach.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week told his Iranian counterpart that China opposes the use or threat of force in international relations and also opposes using the “law of the jungle”.
China was willing to play a “constructive role” in resolving differences through dialogue, Wang told Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, according to a Chinese readout.
The Trump Administration’s actions could have real implications for China.
Venezuela and Iran are key parts of the anti-US alliance that Chinese leader Xi Jinping - together with Russian President Vladimir Putin - has been leading in an effort to build influence among US adversaries, secure energy supplies and demonstrate that Washington is no longer the indispensable organiser of global politics.
So, too, is Cuba, which Trump has also threatened.
But the upheaval could also have economic effects for Beijing: China has been Venezuela’s biggest customer for oil, purchasing most of its supply, and also buys more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil, according to consultancy firms.
Trump last week warned that any country that continues doing business with Iran could face a 25% tariff on trade with the US - a warning aimed squarely at China.
Still, Xi is probably following what American statesman Henry Kissinger characterised as the core Chinese approach to foreign policy: Focus on the long game.
China can afford to play the long game precisely because it can depend on the US to create opportunities for it to do so, said Bates Gill, a senior fellow for Asian security with the National Bureau of Asian Research in Washington.
“To the degree countries see the US as more of a problem than a solution to the challenges they face, China will try to provide an alternative,” he said.
In areas such as providing development assistance, opening export markets and in offering educational opportunities, for example, “that is already happening”, Gill said.
“Washington is handing over the script for China to use.”
China has aggressively expanded into Latin America, including through enormous infrastructure projects.
In Venezuela, for example, estimates of total Chinese investment, including loans and investment in the oil industry, range from US$60 billion ($104b) to US$100 billion.
China has also grown its trading ties with the Middle East, including taking advantage of US sanctions on Iran to buy discounted oil.
Though they have been much reduced in recent years, China still depends on shipments from overseas for about two-thirds of its crude oil supplies.
China has many other options on the open market to easily fill the missing supply, said Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official focused on China.
“China has finally got the diversity in supply they’ve always wanted,” said Thompson, now at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“If it’s not Venezuela, it’s South Sudan, or elsewhere in the Middle East, or even Papua New Guinea.”
The world is awash in oil, and China “can buy it on the open market anywhere”.
In the Middle East, the pain for Beijing is less a financial sting than a blow to its growing diplomatic ambitions.
Several splashy moves in recent years by Beijing have underscored its desire to play a bigger role in the region.
In 2023, China brokered a detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, surprising Washington, which had been the dominant outside dealmaker since the end of the Cold War.
Then in 2024, Beijing, which had increasingly aligned itself with Palestinian leaders since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel, announced a deal between Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, to increase unity among the bitter rivals during the war in Gaza.
Chinese state media heralded the agreement as evidence of China’s emerging role as a Middle East power broker - even as experts cautioned that deep mistrust and scant implementation plans left practical unity elusive.
Since then, the ceasefire in Gaza has held tenuously. Palestinian political divisions remain entrenched, with little sign that Beijing’s initiative has translated into durable governance or leverage on the ground, underlining China’s limited ability to convert diplomatic breakthroughs into lasting outcomes.
Even as protests were roiling Tehran and Trump was threatening to intervene, Iran sent naval warships to participate in the Chinese-led “Will for Peace 2026” military exercises off the coast of South Africa, part of the first multilateral exercise by the BRICS organisation.
South Africa asked Iran to withdraw at the last minute to avoid further antagonising the US, local media reported, but photos showed Iranian ships heading out to join the exercises.
Although India did not attend and Brazil was only an observer, the exercises - involving the Chinese, Russian and South African navies - underscored Beijing’s desire to expand the membership and the remits of political and economic blocs it leads.
China has used platforms such as BRICS, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to amplify its voice and push for what Xi described in a 2023 speech as “fairness and justice in international affairs”, and an enhanced voice for developing countries.
In some respects, the Chinese effort has been a success.
Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran all joined BRICS in 2024, and dozens of others have expressed interest in joining.
Beijing has promoted the grouping as the foundation of a Global South coalition that can push de‑dollarisation and new technological links.
For all its talk of partnerships and mutual support, Beijing’s approach is deeply pragmatic, analysts say.
And that means its commitment to supporting its allies is strictly limited, especially when it comes to existential crises like Venezuela’s or potentially confronting the regime in Tehran.
Ultimately, said Andrea Ghiselli, a lecturer in international politics at the University of Exeter, most countries are under little illusion about what China will and will not do.
“Outside a truly limited number of countries that occupy a strategic position in Chinese diplomacy like Russia and North Korea, China is willing to provide economic and diplomatic support and sell weapons and train security forces,” Ghiselli said.
“Yet, when push comes to shove, Beijing will stand aside, never truly committed to the survival of any regime.”
Theo Nencini, a researcher specialising in Sino-Iranian relations and a lecturer at Sciences Po Grenoble, concurred.
While Beijing’s role as a broker in cases like the Iran-Saudi rapprochement was appreciated, China’s input was not necessarily critical to what had been an ongoing process.
“Nor is it evident that China’s currently restrained posture towards the crises in Venezuela and Iran undermines its political credibility among its traditional diplomatic partners, or that it significantly damages its reputation as a ‘responsible partner,’” Nencini said.
Beijing is highly unlikely to “take any overtly provocative steps at this point”, Gill said.
It will issue boilerplate statements opposing “foreign interference” in the internal affairs of other countries.
“Behind the scenes, China’s leadership and strategists will be reassessing relations in South America and the Gulf regions, providing quiet back-channel reassurances of economic, political and diplomatic support to countries that may be Washington’s next targets, such as Iran and Cuba.”
China will continue playing the long game, analysts say - content to absorb the shocks from Washington and trust that patience remains its most reliable foreign policy asset.
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