The political atmosphere in Venezuela remains fraught in the weeks after its presidential election. While President Nicolás Maduro’s loyalist-packed supreme court backed his claim of victory on Thursday, the opposition produced compelling evidence that its own candidate, Edmundo González, won in a landslide. Since the election, government repression against those protesting Maduro’s claims has left 20 people dead and over 1,500 arrested, with leading opposition figures forced into hiding to avoid arbitrary arrest. Many governments in Latin America and the West have denounced the official tally as a fraud or refused to recognize the election results until detailed voting data is published. Among the few governments that have vocally endorsed Maduro’s alleged victory is China (and Xi Jinping personally), which has a growing history of bolstering Maduro’s dictatorship and hindering a democratic transition. There has also been some censorship of Venezuela-related content on Chinese social media, including the recent deletion from WeChat of a 2023 article by Liu Yu, associate professor of political science at Tsinghua University, under the title “How did Venezuela fall apart?”
Last weekend, Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez met with Chinese Ambassador Lan Hu to discuss strengthening economic ties. In Nikkei Asia earlier this month, Carlos Eduardo Pina described China’s diplomatic and economic support for Maduro in recent years:
In 2019, China used its veto in the United Nations Security Council to prevent the recognition of Juan Guaido, the former president of the National Assembly, as head of state. Later, Beijing sent medicine to Caracas during the pandemic. Finally, Chinese officials authorized a national defense company to transport Venezuelan oil supplies to its territory, a measure that allowed the Maduro government to circumvent U.S. sanctions on its oil industry.
China and the Venezuelan government have gotten even closer recently. Since Maduro’s last visit to Beijing in September 2023, the bilateral relationship has been upgraded again, and is now considered an all-weather partnership. And contact between the two sides have increased, bringing new actors such as entrepreneurs, local governors and mid-level officials into the relationship.
Beijing has also upgraded its political support for Maduro’s government. In March, it endorsed Venezuela’s National Electoral Council amid U.S. criticism of its lack of transparency and bias. Later, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Washington’s seizure of Citgo, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, was interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs. The lesson is clear: Beijing is not only protecting its ally but also using its influence over the Venezuelan government to counter U.S. influence in Latin America. [Source]
While the U.S. has been imposing increasingly strict sanctions on Venezuela, over the last decade China has provided Venezuela with $62 billion in loans for more than 600 investment projects, accounting for over half of China’s total loans to Latin America. Venezuela still owes China about $10 billion, which Venezuela is still open to paying, as Maduro’s son told Reuters in May. Terrence McCoy at The Washington Post speculated this month about whether China’s ongoing support is motivated by financial or geopolitical interest:
It’s difficult to know China’s ambitions in Venezuela. It could be that they want to cultivate and bolster a friend who can help undermine Western interests in South America, a continent rich in natural resources sought by both China and the United States. Or they might just want to make sure they can collect on their loans.
“It’s very difficult to disentangle how much of this is a financial strategy versus geopolitical in nature,” said Stephen Kaplan, a political economist at George Washington University.
Other analysts see clear political motives. Several say Russia, China and others are pursuing a campaign of political reciprocity in Venezuela to retaliate against the United States for its support of their adversaries in Ukraine, Taiwan and other countries.
“This needs to be seen through the prism of a superpower conflict between the U.S., Russia and China, and a complete eroding of the world order,” said Ulf Thoene, a political scientist at La Sabana University in Colombia. “What’s happening in Venezuela is a fight between a candidate clearly backed by Russia, China and Iran — and an opposition that is obviously supported by the United States and Europe.” [Source]
Maduro has shown an affinity for the Chinese government’s use of repressive technology and authoritarian tactics. Shortly after the election, he ordered a ten-day block on the social media platform X in order to suppress information-sharing among those skeptical of his claim to victory. He also urged his supporters to abandon WhatsApp in favor of WeChat. This month, over 70 NGOs signed an open letter condemning the “technology-enabled political violence in Venezuela.” Among the tactics employed by Maduro’s administration is the promotion of an app that enables citizens to snitch on protesters to the government:
In the aftermath of the presidential elections on July 28, there has been violent repression by police, military, and paramilitary groups, as well as reports of harassment and persecution strategies enabled by the use of technology. The government has intensified its digital surveillance and censorship measures, using tools such as messaging app VenApp to report on dissenting activities and to dox demonstrators, video surveillance to monitor protests, and patrolling drones to provoke widespread fear.
VenApp represents the latest evolution in this surveillance apparatus. The application, which has raised significant concerns about privacy and state surveillance since its launch in December 2022, has now been promoted by President Nicolás Maduro as a means for citizens to report on their neighbors, further entrenching a culture of surveillance and control. It now incorporates features that allow users to tip authorities off about activities deemed suspicious by the state, covering categories such as “guarimba fascista” (a term used to describe opposition protests), looting, public disorder, and even “disinformation,” which targets journalists. The integration of digital platforms into Chavismo’s practices of persecution follows a decades-long pattern of creating a system of punishment and rewards to obtain social intelligence through accusations of political dissidence, embedded in society through a structure of local party “street bosses” and snitches known as “Patriotas Cooperantes.” Viewing any democrat challenging their power as a potential conspirator or destabilizer, the government has fostered an environment of mistrust and surveillance, targeting those it perceives to be internal enemies. [Source]
Similar efforts have been tested by government authorities in China. This includes a 2021 hotline for netizens to report others who “attack [the CCP’s] leadership and policies” and spread historical nihilism, with a government notice stating, “We hope that the majority of Internet users will actively play their part in supervising society.” In 2016, authorities launched a “Safe Zhejiang” app that enabled users to notify authorities of illegal publications and behavior deemed undesirable by the government. In 2020, the Hong Kong government created a hotline to report breaches of the National Security Law.
Chinese state-affiliated entities have also actively cooperated with the Venezuelan government to construct its surveillance apparatus. Reuters reported in 2018 that Chinese telecom giant ZTE helped Maduro build an infamous system that monitors citizen behavior via an identification card. A consortium of Chinese companies including ZTE, Huawei, and state-owned China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation (CEIEC) have developed a networked system of over 30,000 video surveillance cameras in Caracas and other Venezuelan cities over the past decade, with Huawei personnel helping train Venezuelan engineers on how to maintain the system. In 2021, Alessandra Soler at Global Voices described the role of CEIEC in the Venezuelan government’s surveillance and repression:
In November 2020, the U.S. Department of Treasury, through its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), sanctioned CEIEC for helping the Maduro government undermine democracy, including “efforts to restrict internet service and conduct digital surveillance and cyber operations against political opponents.” According to OFAC, CEIEC provided Venezuela with the commercialized version of China’s “Great Firewall,” a nationwide filtering system and set of protocols enacted by Beijing that prevents politically sensitive content from entering the domestic network.
[…] In 2020, during an interview in a popular online show, William Peña, a Caracas-based journalist specialized in telecommunications and ICTs, stated that CEIEC exported and manages software that collects big data on Venezuelans, which helps the government exercise social control through approaches such as access to healthcare and much-needed government subsidies. Two years earlier, another Chinese company, the ZTE Corporation, was the subject of public scrutiny for its significant role in helping the government develop this system.
According to Peña, CEIEC has also provided technical assistance to the Venezuelan government to conduct espionage of journalists and opposition leaders, throttle internet speeds, and block digital broadcasts. [Source]
\As Jaime Moreno reported for VOA in 2022, at least one former Venezuelan government advisor has revealed official efforts to emulate the Chinese government’s surveillance capabilities:
“Whoever believes that privacy exists in Venezuela through email communications, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram is wrong. All these tools” are totally subject to government intervention, said Anthony Daquin, former adviser on computer security matters to the Ministry of Justice of Venezuela.
Daquin participated between 2002 and 2008 in delegations sent by former President Hugo Chávez to China to learn how Beijing uses software to identify Chinese citizens, and to implement a similar system in Venezuela.
[…] Daquin said China’s role in recent years has been to provide technology and technical assistance to help the Venezuelan government process large amounts of data and monitor people whom the government considers enemies of the state.
“They have television camera systems, fingerprints, facial recognition, word algorithm systems for the internet and conversations,” he said. [Source]
On Tuesday, Oliver Stuenkel wrote in Carnegie Emissary that, backed by China, Maduro’s resilience reflects the West’s limited influence in Venezuela:
Maduro retains control over the armed forces, the military police force, paramilitaries, and different intelligence services. The generals in particular control important parts of the country’s economy—namely oil, which Venezuela depends on—and have little incentive to facilitate a transition of power. Solid ties to China, Russia, and a number of other allies help guarantee the regime’s survival. Although authoritarian regimes are notoriously opaque, making it difficult to identify cracks early on, there are currently no signs that Maduro won’t be able to weather yet another period of domestic pushback—and relatively tame international rebuke. [Source]
But optimism prevailed in a Politics Possible podcast episode titled “Can Authoritarians Be Challenged When the Ballot Box is Rigged?” released just before the Venezuelan election. Evan Feigenbaum, along with David Smolansky Urosa, Mu Sochua, and Alena Popova—opposition leaders from Venezuela, Cambodia, and Russia, respectively—discussed the importance of coalition-building across dissident communities in exile:
David: I think there are different initiatives that we are being articulated in this network of dissidents across the world, that are suffering from different dictatorships. That’s a very good first step, you know, to know each other, to know the story of each of us, to understand the type of regime that we are facing. There are some similarities but in others there are differences as well, but that’s a very important step. And I think as a dissident also, you need to raise more awareness in democracies across the world.
[…] Evan: And that’s part of what’s inspiring about it. It suggested that here are three countries—yours in Europe, David’s in Latin America, Sochua’s in Asia—and not only are there commonalities of experience but also the ability to learn, and then build coalitions and collaborate, across borders.
[…] Alena: All the problems that were very common for all three countries, what does it mean for us? It means that if we unite, if we share our experience, we can be much more powerful than all these dictators in any countries. [Source]
