Shortly before the U.S. military visited Venezuela to arrest the country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and provide transportation to the United States, Maduro had a meeting with a representative of the People’s Republic of China (ABP Live, January 4, 2026).
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met a Chinese envoy just hours before the US launched a strike in Caracas and captured him. Maduro received Qiu Xiaoqi, a special representative of the Chinese government on Latin America affairs.
Notably, the two met at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, where Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were later captured by the US military forces early Saturday morning.
“I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi, Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping,” Maduro said on Telegram. “We reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace,” he said, as quoted by Anadolu Agency.
Maduro can speak jive just as well as the CCP. “Multipolar” is code for free-world-crushing. The purpose of Xi Jinping’s multipolar world is to replace or at least substantially override the imperfect freedom of Western and allied countries and its associated institutions with China-led totalitarian domination. Maduro and Qiu understood each other to be part of the same gang. It would be nice for China if Venezuela remained as hospitable to its espionage, surveillance and other ventures in this hemisphere as Venezuela has been. So of course their meeting was cordial and relationship-confirming.
A July 2025 report explained that the China and Venezuela “are expanding cooperation across energy, tech, infrastructure, and defence. With over 600 joint projects and growing maritime and military links, the partnership challenges longstanding US influence…. Washington’s sanctions contrast with Beijing’s pragmatic, infrastructure-driven approach…. Venezuela is no stranger to friendly ties with China, but things are now reaching new levels.”
An election
In July 2024, the Human Rights Foundation noted that Maduro had stolen the recent presidential election in Venezuela conducted on July 28, 2024.
The Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council had announced a 51.2% majority for the dictator. But, said HRF, these results contradicted “exit poll numbers documented by the unified democratic opposition—led by the illegally disqualified candidate María Corina Machado and her replacement, the unity candidate Edmundo González—which gave the democratic opposition candidate the victory with 70% of the national vote.”
Early in 2025, a Journal of Democracy article observed that “an opposition candidate defeated Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro at the polls—and then used the government’s own voting technology to prove it. Yet Maduro remains in power.” The tech had been installed by Hugo Chávez “when he was popular and needed to defend real electoral returns against false accusations of fraud.”
A demand
In contrast to many Venezuelans, the Chinese Communist Party is unhappy about Maduro’s recent demotion and “has demanded that the US immediately release Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife…. In a statement released on Sunday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that taking the president out of his country in this manner is wrong and that the issue should be resolved through dialogue.”
