When U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Chinese social media lit up.
People with nationalist views asked: Why can’t Beijing do the same in Taiwan and arrest its president?
On the other side of the political spectrum, people cheered the downfall of a dictator. Trying to avoid censors when criticizing China’s leader, Xi Jinping, they invoked the title of a pop song, “Too bad it’s not you.”
Within hours, the discourse online became a proxy debate over China’s power, its limits and its future. For nationalist Chinese, the U.S. military operation had exposed American lawlessness and frustrations in China at what they believe is Beijing’s restraint, particularly on Taiwan. For those venturing criticism of the government, the episode underscored the vulnerability of even entrenched authoritarian leaders.
On the social media site Weibo, the hashtag related to Mr. Maduro’s seizure rose to the No. 1 position on the platform’s hot-search list. It drew over 600 million views in the first 24 hours, according to data from the platform.
The reactions revealed a Chinese society divided between those who want their country to wield power as unapologetically as President Trump is using America’s and those who see in Venezuela a warning about where personalist rule, ideological rigidity and economic mismanagement may lead. Venezuela has become a political Rorschach test: proof of American arrogance to some and a glimpse of China’s possible future to others.
For Mr. Xi, the capture of Mr. Maduro arrived at an awkward moment. He is facing pressure from nationalist commentators agitating for strong action on Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its own. Under a Weibo post by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, one popular comment called the U.S. operation “a very important lesson — for Taiwan in particular.”
Another was blunter: “If the United States can arrest another country’s president, then China can absolutely arrest Lai Ching-te,” Taiwan’s president. “It’s not that China is not able to,” another user responded. “It’s that China doesn’t dare to.”
Over the years, the Chinese government has lent considerable political and financial support for Mr. Maduro. Mr. Xi’s critics characterized that as a failure of judgment after Mr. Maduro’s capture. The timing, just hours after Mr. Maduro’s meeting with an official Chinese delegation, prompted pointed questions about judgment and state capacity. “Always picking the wrong partner is also a kind of skill,” one comment said.
One image shared on X that looks like graffiti scrawled on a toilet stall read, in both Chinese and English, “We welcome Trump to capture Xi Jinping and free 1.4 billion Chinese people.” Images like this are unlikely to remain visible on Chinese platforms and are often shared on X accounts outside the reach of domestic censors.
The Chinese government has responded with familiar statements condemning the U.S. operation as a violation of sovereignty and international law.
Venezuela occupies a peculiar place in the Chinese imagination. For years, Beijing presented Venezuela as evidence that China could help construct an alternative global order grounded in sovereignty and cooperation among countries without interference in each other’s internal affairs. That vision was backed by money. Beginning in the mid-2000s, China extended tens of billions of dollars in loans to Venezuela, largely through oil-for-loan arrangements.
The logic appeared straightforward: China needed energy, and Venezuela needed cash and political backing. The deals at the time were portrayed by Chinese state media and official commentary as effective and market based. Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, described the China-Venezuela partnership as a “model” for other Latin American countries. When Mr. Maduro took over in 2013 at the death of Mr. Chávez, Beijing maintained its support even as Western sanctions on Venezuela intensified.
When Venezuela’s economy collapsed, its oil production fell and infrastructure started to decay. It became increasingly uncertain how Venezuela would pay China back. But Chinese officials insisted the cooperation remained orderly. When Mr. Maduro paid a state visit to China in 2023, Mr. Xi welcomed him with a military parade, a 21-gun salute and cheering children.
Liberally minded Chinese intellectuals have for years drawn parallels between Mr. Xi’s rise and Mr. Chávez’s ascent. Both consolidated power through anticorruption campaigns, populist economic promises and the removal of term limits. Mr. Maduro maintained his predecessor’s strong-arm tactics.
In this line of thinking, Venezuela is not simply a foreign-policy embarrassment. It’s a case study in what happens when authoritarian rule hardens into stagnation, institutions hollow out and political loyalty outweighs competence. In Chinese debates, the blunt question becomes: Will China become the next Venezuela?
That framing has been reinforced in the past few days by a widely shared essay by the political scientist Liu Yu titled, “How to Destroy a Nation.” The piece, written before the pandemic, treats Venezuela not as an anomaly but as a warning about how governance failures compound over time.
The fear of becoming the next Venezuela has taken on sharper resonance over the past year as the economic stagnation facing China has come to feel less cyclical and more structural. For many Chinese, the concern is not sudden collapse but slow decay. Venezuela has come to symbolize a country where systems stop working incrementally, shortages become routine and basic state functions are never fully restored.
Against that backdrop, the most common reaction online to Mr. Maduro’s capture has been neither outrage nor celebration, but a shrugging realism about how power works in the world. The operation was framed not as a question of right or wrong but a confirmation that major powers behave similarly when their interests are at stake.
On WeChat, a businessman reposted a street interview with a young Venezuelan man responding to claims that Washington was motivated solely by capturing the country’s oil. “What do you think the Russians and the Chinese wanted?” the man asked. “The recipe for arepas?” The clip captures the argument that China is not morally distinct from the United States in the pursuit of power.
The idea that power, rather than principle, determines outcomes was also used by many nationalist commentators who argued that China should “learn from the United States.” Some called for China to “directly arrest” Taiwan’s leaders.
Yet some of those interpretations of the American actions were met with skepticism. “The People’s Liberation Army could arrest Lai easily,” one person wrote, referring to Taiwan’s president. “But what would that solve? Arrest one Lai and there will be another.”
Li Yuan writes The New New World column, which focuses on China’s growing influence on the world by examining its businesses, politics and society.
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