Data shows Venezuela’s pivot from the U.S. to China

With close to 200 American troops entering Caracas on Saturday, the Trump administration’s invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its President Nicolas Maduro was the most dramatic U.S. intervention in Latin America since the 1989 Panama invasion.

The U.S. military intervention has sent shock waves across the globe, with allies and adversaries condemning the U.S. action as a clear violation of international law. Experts suggest that the move was primarily aimed at reimposing the Monroe Doctrine to re-establish U.S. hegemony in the Americas and reducing China’s influence in the region.

It is interesting to note that Venezuela relied heavily on the U.S. for weapons till 1995 before diversifying largely to players like Germany and Russia.

However, since the mid-2000s, China has consistently emerged as one of its key partners for weapons imports. There were no recorded instances of arms exports, in the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s database from the U.S. to Venezuela in the last two decades, except for a negligible share in 2015.

The chart below shows the countrywise share of weapon imports by Venezuela in the 1950-2023 period

As shown in the chart below, the trend became more apparent during the Maduro regime. Since 2014, China has accounted for 46% of all arms imports by Venezuela.

Secondly, Venezuela is one of China’s key trade partners in Latin America.

While Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, it lacks the resources to effectively extract and refine them.

Consequently, the South American country has sought alternative economic alliances with nations like China and Russia, which have demonstrated a greater tolerance for the financial and geopolitical risks involved. This trend is visible not just in the arms trade but also in oil exports.

While direct crude oil data was unavailable, this analysis relies on mineral export figures — a category in which crude oil is a primary component. China formed less than 1% of Venezuela’s mineral exports in the early 2000s but reached a peak of 28% by 2018. The chart below shows the countrywise share (in %) of Venezuela’s mineral exports among major partners.

A Reuters analysis showed that for some months in mid-2025, almost all the oil exports from the country went to China.

China has also surpassed the U.S. as the primary source of imports for Venezuela.

In 2023, the U.S. accounted for only one-fourth of Venezuela’s imports, with China accounting for one-third in the same period. This, however, was not always the case. In the mid-1990s, the share of the U.S. in Venezuela’s imports crossed the 40% mark consistently for many years. However, in the last two decades, the U.S.’s share had almost halved, compensated by the increase in China’s share.

Thirdly, one of the reasons behind the Trump administration’s latest move is also supposedly to counter the Chinese influence in the region.

China’s investments in the Latin America region, in forms of aid, loans and grants, total up to more than $300 billion between 2001-2023, as shown in the chart below. Of which more than one-third (about $106 billion) was invested just in Venezuela, making it the biggest recipient of Chinese investments in the region.

Not only within Latin American, Venezuela is also the fourth-largest recipient of Chinese aid globally, figures from AidData, a research lab, show. China has committed to more than 170 projects in the country during this period.

Almost all of these funds have been disbursed as loans, and over 26% has been invested in key sectors such as energy, mining and other related industries.

Data were sourced from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Harvard Growth Lab and AidData.org