The End of China’s Dictator Club? What Maduro’s Capture Really Means | Digging into China

Hello, I'm Dongsheng. Welcome to Digging into China, where we take a deep dive into what's really happening in China and share some unique insights. So Maduro just got grabbed. What kind of impact is this going to have on Xi Jinping and the bigger world picture? And why do I say that when Maduro gets caught, Xi Jinping is actually the second biggest loser right after Maduro himself? First, let's talk about the most direct hit to Chinese Communist Party. All those investments they poured into Venezuela, very likely gone down the drain. When it comes to foreign aid and loans, Venezuela has been one of the biggest recipients for the CCP, right up there with the top spots. Reliable estimates from sources like AidData put the total commitments from Chinese official lenders to Venezuela at around $100 to $106 billion US dollars over the years, mostly through oil-backed loans. On top of that, after Venezuela confiscated the shares of American oil companies, the CCP stepped in and became the main investor there. During the Maduro years, they were also the biggest strategic partner for oil extraction. Take the Sino-Vensa oil field project for example, a joint venture between China National Petroleum Corporation and the Venezuelan government. CNPC holds 49.9%, the Venezuelan side holds 50.1%. And to secure that project, the CCP handed Venezuela a loan, part of the bigger financing picture. Beyond oil, companies like ZTE and Huawei helped build telecom-based stations, CHERRY set up factories, and so on. After Maduro's capture, most of these investments are probably going to evaporate. Of course, the real money that's already been spent is gone, but whatever. The CCP is so rich, one or two hundred billion dollars, that's serious money, but in the grand scheme for them, it's manageable. Spread across the whole population, it's just a few thousand renminbi squeezed out of each Chinese person. They are not exactly short of cash, their ability to extract money is legendary after all. On the oil side, yes, Venezuela's heavy crude has some special value. But China has plenty of other big brothers who produce oil, Iran, Russia, big producers. The CCP never lacked channels to import oil anyway. In the past, Venezuelan crude only made up about 5% of China's total oil imports. Losing it, the impact is basically negligible. So if the damage was only at this level, we couldn't really call Xi Jinping the biggest loser in Maduro's downfall. Then why do I still say this event hits Xi Jinping very hard? The real deepest impact is on the international landscape, on the overall power picture after Maduro got caught. Now a lot of people are saying this is actually good news for the CCP. Why? Mostly because of the legal angle. Some argue that if the United States can so easily go into another sovereign country and grab their leader, then it gives Xi Jinping a kind of precedent or legitimacy to cross the Taiwan Strait and capture Taiwan's present Lai Ching-te. But that logic is flawed from the start. In the CCP's own narrative, Taiwan has never been a sovereign country. It's purely China's internal affair. So from their perspective, grabbing Maduro and grabbing Lai Ching-te are not the same thing at all. If you equate the two, you are basically admitting Taiwan is their country, which is the last thing the CCP wants to do. And let's be honest, when has the CCP ever truly cared about international law? If they could grab Lai Ching-te in 1 hour and 11 minutes by crossing the sea, the only reason they haven't is because they still don't have the strength. This time, the overwhelming military power the United States displayed will actually deter the CCP. And even more importantly, it will deter the CCP's teammates. It seriously damages their story. For years, the CCP has been pushing this narrative. United, the third world to stand against the United States. That includes traditional non-sanctioned countries, some good brothers in Africa, and also countries already under heavy American sanctions, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea. Because of US sanctions, Venezuela and Iran's oil was basically banned from normal markets. But the CCP kept buying, helping them evade sanctions in all kinds of ways. 80% of Iran's oil, 90% of Venezuela's oil, they got sold to China with the CCP's help. In practice, the CCP became the economic lifeline for these regimes. In this setup, Venezuela and Iran essentially became frontline bridgeheads in the US-China confrontation. Only this confrontation was mostly economic. You could call it an economic proxy war. For a long time, this proxy war was fought at a low temperature. Neither side could really claim victory. Sure, these authoritarian states suffered economically from sanctions, but the dictators themselves, not much. With the CCP bailouts, they could still hold on to power, still live in luxury with red wine and foie gras every day while their people wondered where the next meal was coming from. But after Maduro got grabbed, this whole narrative suddenly looks very fragile. Third world countries that still want to stand with the CCP, want to be the little brothers charging in the frontline? Now they have to seriously think about the real cost of confronting the United States, especially after seeing Maduro taken alive in just 1 hour and 11 minutes. Xi Jinping may not be worried about getting personally snatched if he attacks Taiwan, but what about all these other small, weak dictatorships? This time, not only was Maduro captured, but it was done so cleanly. Only Maduro and his wife were arrested, and a few dozen Cuban bodyguards were physically eliminated. That basically removes the last firewall these dictators thought they had. In the past, weak country dictators relied on two big things besides CCP cash, human shields, and the moral halo those human shields created. If you want to take me out, you first have to kill thousands of my supporters. That created huge public opinion risk for countries like the United States. The Hamas situation in Gaza is a classic example. Even when Israel used relatively precise strikes to decapitate some Hamas leaders, any bombing inevitably hit ordinary Palestinian civilians, creating enormous moral risk for Israel. But this direct capture largely neutralizes the importance of human shields. In the future, that human war tactic may simply cease to exist. The strongest moral barrier dictators had is starting to disappear. In this new situation, these dictators have to carefully weigh the cost of standing with the CCP. Is it still cost-free and brainless to become their bridgeheads? And what really chills these authoritarian brothers is this. When their teammate Maduro got grabbed, the CCP couldn't provide any meaningful help at all. Their intelligence was so poor that even the day before the capture, they sent their special envoy to pay a friendly visit to Maduro, completely clueless about what was coming. The radars the CCP gave Venezuela couldn't detect American aircraft. Compare that with Biden giving Zelensky a heads-up half a month before Russia invaded Ukraine. And after the capture, the CCP didn't stand up for their good brother. No reverse sanctions on the US, no real support for the remaining Maduro regime to fight back. The most they did was grumble about Trump and the United States on the international stage. Just imagine, even if we don't ask whether they could do it, suppose the CCP really did capture Lai Ching-te in 1 hour and 11 minutes, would the United States just sit back? Very possibly, they would get directly involved. But even if not, massive economic sanctions would be unavoidable. They would never just issue some mild international condemnation. And Lai Ching-te's status is still somewhat ambiguous. Whether Taiwan is a sovereign country remains hard to pin down. Internationally, a more comparable case is actually a country like the Philippines. Venezuela is the CCP's bridgehead in Latin America. The Philippines is America's bridgehead in Asia. If the CCP snatched the Philippine president in 1 hour and 11 minutes, would the United States just condemn them in words? Of course not. If they only did that, what would everyone think of America's credibility? All their allies would probably walk away. Yet, right now, China only issued a simple, mild condemnation. When it comes to strategic partners, you charge forward as their ally. But when real hard confrontation with the United States arrives, they shrink back. The CCP has neither the ability nor the will to truly back up its little brothers. This time, their paper tiger nature was on full display. And honestly, this isn't the first time the CCP has failed to support its allies. When Iran got bombed earlier, same thing. American B-2 bombers did a long-range pounding and afterwards, basically zero meaningful support from the CCP. Same pattern, no capability to detect B-2s and no real determination to act. The biggest support was probably sending some online water army to help with PR cleanup for Iran. Even on the Russia-Ukraine war, the CCP eventually supported Russia. But because they were afraid of offending the EU and losing their trade partner, the support was hesitant and half-hearted. Last April 2, when Trump imposed Liberation Day tariffs and taxed basically the whole world, including some allies, it definitely dealt a heavy blow to America's leadership image among democratic countries. But today, with Maduro captured and the CCP offering zero help, zero real response, that is also a heavy blow to their position as the leader of the authoritarian club. Arguably, the damage to their leadership status is even greater than Trump's tariff war. After Trump's round of tariffs, allied countries still got treated better than non-allies. If you really listen to Trump, he backed you without hesitation. So after the Maduro incident, those dictators who once firmly stood with the CCP may need to rethink the benefits and returns of doing so. In the future, when the CCP tries to recruit more authoritarian allies, it's going to be much harder. Next time they hail they hold a big military parade on September 3, the number of good brothers willing to show up will probably be noticeably smaller. Of course, besides the allies taking a hit, there is another even more direct impact on the CCP. Some western countries led by the United States are starting to change the very paradigm of how they conduct diplomacy. Paradigm means the underlying logic, the basic thinking behind foreign relations. Many people simply blame Trump's capture of Maduro on a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, thinking Monroe Doctrine has become America's new diplomatic paradigm. The Monroe Doctrine, proposed by former President James Monroe, said the whole America is America's backyard and the U.S. should maintain absolute control there. But Trump's shift goes way beyond just leaning toward the Monroe Doctrine, and he is certainly not limiting American influence to the Americas. His biggest change is actually leading the United States, and perhaps the whole world, toward realism in foreign affairs. In diplomacy, there have long been two opposing schools, neoliberalism and realism. Simply put, neoliberalism in foreign policy believes countries can set aside raw power and resolve disputes through rules, institutions, and laws. The most classic product of this thinking is the United Nations, a rather weak form of world government. There, the five permanent members have privileges, but most countries have equal voting rights, regardless of size or strength. Outside the permanent five, everyone is equal in the UN. The UN can supposedly solve all international disputes. That's basically the ultimate form of neoliberal thinking. Realism, on the other hand, says you can't build international order relying on laws and institutions like the UN. You certainly can't create a one-country, one-vote democracy among nations. At its core, diplomacy obeys power. Any rules, institutions, or UN bodies that exist are just extensions of national power. That famous CCP saying, weak countries have no diplomacy, is pure realist logic. Now, you might hear this and think, neoliberalism sounds naive and idealistic. And yet, for a very long time, both schools coexisted in the international system, and for a while, neoliberalism was actually dominant. Democratic countries generally believe in it. In the past, if the United States wanted to attack another country, they usually went to the UN first for authorization, considering international law cared about world opinion. Countries like China and Russia, on the other hand, have long been pure realists, both in rhetoric and in action. This coexistence actually gave realist countries like China and Russia a huge advantage. When it suited them, they played the neoliberal game, used international rules in order to get benefits. When it didn't suit them, they dropped the mask and reverted to raw realism, breaking promises, playing rogue, no problem. Examples are endless. When joining the WTO served them, they praised the importance of WTO rules and demanded everyone follow free trade commitments. But when it came time to fulfill entry promises, CCP suddenly questioned WTO legitimacy. On Hong Kong, they emphasized the importance of Britain's past promise. But when changing the system, they called the 50-year promise a historical document with no current value. On Taiwan, they always point out Taiwan has no legal standing in the UN. But when it comes to the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea, suddenly, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea disappears from the conversation. Countries like China and Russia practiced realism themselves while living comfortably under a neoliberal, rule-based system dominated by others. They profited enormously. But that began to change in 2021. 2021 was the high point of authoritarians and realists trampling on neoliberalism, and at the same time, the beginning of neoliberalism's declining in the West. When the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, even though Biden won the Zelensky in advance and Ukraine fought back impressively, once the tanks rolled in, basically all international organizations could only stand by helplessly. They couldn't impose any effective sanctions. International order became meaningless under Russian tanks. The Ukraine war caused diplomatic neoliberalism to collapse on the spot. If a rule only protects the rule-breakers, then the rule is worthless. And that collapse also directly paved the way for someone like Trump to come to power. Trump is a classic realist inside a democratic system. He doesn't care about international rules. He pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, ignored trade orders, started trade wars, threatened to leave this group or that group, all typical realist behavior. Trump's foreign policy basically stands in polar opposition to Biden's, to most previous American presidents, and to democratic leaders in general. It marks the shift of American diplomacy from Biden-era neoliberalism to Trump-style realism. And this isn't just Trump alone. Right-wing governments in other democracies have started following the same path, moving from supporters of the UN and neoliberal institutions to critics. Take Netanyahu in Israel. His operations in Gaza no longer care about the UN opinions, or Japan's Sanai-Takaichi government. Their statements on Taiwan now directly cross the One-China Framework. And the recent Maduro capture pushes America's realist diplomacy on a new peak. I don't think Maduro arrest is the peak of this realist trend. It's just the appetizer. We'll see democratic countries start behaving more like rogues, just like the CCP, ignoring international law. When that happens, no one should be shocked. It's simply the sign that democracies are turning realist. And this shift will be a much bigger blow to our Chairman Xi than anything else. Once Western diplomatic norms become realist, the CCP can no longer exploit international rules and order the way they used to. It means future conflicts, whether with the US or Europe, will no longer be about reasoning and talking. They will become straight-up tests of hard national power. When it really comes down to raw strength, can Russia and the CCP still be as tough and dominant as before? Does Russia have the ability to parachute in and capture Zelensky? Israel can decapitate Kamenei directly. Does Iran have the ability to decapitate Netanyahu? Obviously not. If they did, they would have done it already. And even if they did, Israel is an elected government. They wouldn't care much about losing a president. Morality, if it exists, has never favored the strong. It favors the weak. After authoritarians practiced realism, broke open Pandora's box, destroyed neoliberal order, and brought the world back to pure survival of the fittest, the ones who suffer most in the end are still the authoritarians themselves. Xi Jinping will face a diplomatic environment far more difficult than anything under Biden. This is much more dangerous than just losing a few allies. I believe relations between countries should be built on basic friendship, respect, and international law. Otherwise, humanity enters a pure era of the law of the jungle. Realism has a huge problem. Its logic despises international law and puts national interests above everything, without talking about democracy, freedom, or universal values. That's why Trump was willing to court Saudi Arabia, willing to court Russia, and why even after capturing Maduro, he showed no interest in helping Venezuela build a democratic system right away. Realism only cares about national interests. Under realism, strong countries will hit dictators hard. But the reason for hitting them has nothing to do with democracy or universal values. On the other hand, the current international order clearly has serious problems too. If the UN stands by doing nothing while Russia invades Ukraine, while CCP suppresses Hong Kong protesters, yet still guarantees safety for people like Maduro, Kim Jong-un, and Xi Jinping, then maybe it really needs to be smashed with fists first, before anyone builds a new order afterward. Thank you so much for watching. If you find this video helpful, please like it, drop a comment below, and hit the subscribe button right here. It really helps YouTube suggest my video to others. I'll be back with more content soon. Until then, be well.