China concerned of risks as US abandons international order

Chinese Foreign-policy experts view the US attack on Venezuela as a first step towards a world divided into “spheres of influence” dominated by Washington, existing allies and new willing partners. This will create new, complex challenges for China’s interests in the Indo-Pacific region - says Yurii Poita. 

Since the US attack on Venezuela, Chinese foreign policy experts have warned that Washington’s apparent turn from global rules to more coercive international power politics is deeply negative for Beijing. While many Western experts saw January’s military operation as proof that the second Trump administration was narrowing its strategic focus on the Western Hemisphere, creating room for China and Russia to claim “spheres of influence” of their own, their Chinese counterparts were arguing, even before the US attacked Iran, that the erosion of the liberal international order was creating risks rather than opportunities for China.  

Meanwhile, the reaction of Chinese experts to the war in Iran shows that China perceives the events in Venezuela and Iran as a continuation of the US’s destructive policies, which could have negative consequences for China. For example, some of them extrapolate the attack on Iran as a potential future US attack on China and argue that China’s task now is to prevent Japan and the Philippines from becoming “Israels in the East and South China Seas.”

Expert takes: The US will not cede a sphere of influence to China

As a review of publications on the US actions against Venezuela shows, there is notably little reference regarding China’s chances to assert its dominance in Asia in the Chinese expert debate. Some do refer to a world moving toward spheres of influence – but under the control of the US and its allies, rather than other great powers. For example, Liao Fan (廖凡), Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warns that “the Venezuela incident” could embolden “traditional US allies such as Japan or the Philippines” to follow suit and “become more active” in the Asia-Pacific region. He explains this by arguing that, on the one hand, they may seek to rely more on their own capabilities and expand their influence. On the other hand, they may attempt to demonstrate their value to the US through actions that could provoke China.

Rather than seeing the attack on Venezuela as evidence of US retrenchment, many Chinese experts read it as a first step towards establishing global – and therefore also Indo-Pacific – dominance. Chen Wenxin (陈文鑫), Director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, for example, describes Venezuela as a “stepping stone for practicing US hegemony.” Yang Bojiang (杨伯江), Director of the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explains that US strategic adjustments would create complex regional challenges and risks that directly interfere with Chinese power claims in the Indo-Pacific: “Although the United States claims to focus on the Western Hemisphere, it will not abandon Taiwan or Japan as pillars of its Indo-Pacific strategy.”

"Dangerous precendent": Chinese experts see world order at stake

Chinese experts think that the Trump administration is going to make the international order more unstable. Its claim to US primacy over the Americas and the decision to use force against governments in the region reflects an “offensive realism, unilateralism and hegemonism” that has turned the US into a “challenger and disruptor of international rules,” as argued by Wu Zhicheng (吴志成) from the Institute of International Strategy at the Party School of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee. “The unilateral use of force against a sovereign state was a violation of international law and the UN Charter,” he added.  

“The liberal international order led by the United States since World War II – especially after the Cold War – is gradually ending,” Liao Fan is not alone in arguing. Yang Jianmin (杨建民) from the Institute of Latin American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that the US claim to be “combating drug trafficking and defending democratic values” in Venezuela “may set a dangerous precedent.” US actions could “potentially lead to more frequent conflicts” and a return to “the law of the jungle, where the security of small and medium-sized states cannot be guaranteed.” This reflects China’s long-standing and traditional rhetoric, including toward the Global South, portraying the US as the main violator of international norms, while China is presented as the core of stability, respect for small states, and a defender of international law.

Rising alertness for new risks

Fears that countries other than the US could pursue more proactive military policies in Asia-Pacific go beyond the suspicion that the US’s staunchest allies in the region, Japan and the Philippines, may side with the US; some publications warn that even countries friendly or neutral towards China could adjust their positions towards Beijing. Ultimately, the US could also delegate more security responsibility to its partners. Yang Bojiang, for example, explains how this could lead to a shift “from a model in which ‘the US leads and Japan follows’ to one of ‘fighting side by side’.” He predicts that China would begin to feel the effects of the US’s strategic adjustment in the course of 2026.