Trumps harte Linie in Lateinamerika lässt China Spielraum

*The president’s take on the Monroe Doctrine is all stick and no carrot — a reductive approach to the great power game between the US and China in Latin America.*

*Jorge Heine for Bloomberg News*

Only a few hours before he was abducted by US special forces, President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela met with Ambassador Qui Xiaoqi, China’s special envoy for Latin America. It was Maduro’s last official activity as head of state. That meeting in many ways embodied the ambiguity and awkwardness of China’s position in the whole Venezuelan imbroglio, both in the run-up to and in the aftermath of the Jan. 3 events that led to the bombing of the Venezuelan capital and the killing of an estimated 100 people.

On the one hand, China spoke out forcefully against the pressure exerted by the US on Venezuela over the past five months. On the other hand, Chinese diplomatic protestations were ultimately as ineffective as the Chinese air defense systems Venezuela had in place to protect its territory

Yet, China’s having been caught unawares on this occasion — and the undoubted setback Operation Absolute Resolve (the name given to it by Washington) entails for Chinese foreign policy — does not mean China will give up on the broad set of links it has built up in Latin America over the past decades.

It’s easy to underestimate the significance of this month’s attack and consider it just another of the many US interventions in Latin America over the past two centuries. Yet that would be a mistake. This was the first US military attack on the South American mainland ever, in 200 years of the region’s independent history. A threshold has been crossed, and we ignore it at our peril.

[Read the full essay here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-16/trump-s-venezuela-strategy-tests-us-china-rivalry-in-latin-america?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2ODU4NzQ0NiwiZXhwIjoxNzY5MTkyMjQ2LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOFlCU1VLSUpIOFkwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.M2KJZwwfDE1WiF3hLuycG_79O64Ea166SS-RS0eGkHg)