(Yicai) Jan. 19 -- The US military launched a surprise attack on Venezuela at the beginning of this year. Online rumors claimed that China suffered asset losses of between USD30 billion and over US100 billion in Venezuela. But Venezuela’s share of China’s total exports, imports, direct investment, and engineering contracting does not reach 1 percent, and it is even less than 1,000th, according to data over the past three decades.

China and Venezuela are highly complementary in resource endowments and industrial structure, but the flaws in Venezuela’s economic and industrial structure and policy mistakes have severely limited the maximum scale of bilateral trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.

Venezuela is rich in oil resources but is also deeply troubled by the ‘resource curse.’ Fluctuations in international oil prices determine the economic boom and bust of the country and affect the ups and downs of its trade and economic scale with China. The resource macroeconomic populism and social policies implemented by Venezuela’s last two presidents -- Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro -- have exacerbated the ‘resource curse.’

Venezuela’s nominal gross domestic product dropped to USD42.8 billion in 2020 from a peak of USD372.6 billion in 2012, and its per capita GDP fell to USD1,533 from USD12,688 in the period, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. During Maduro’s 13-year administration from 2013 to 2025, inflation reached triple digits in six years, and prices rose by more than 653 times in 2018 and 199 times in 2019.

Such a poor macroeconomic environment in Venezuela has capped the upper limit of economic and trade cooperation with China. China’s imports from Venezuela peaked at USD14.5 billion in 2012 and nearly halved to USD6.9 billion in 2015 due to the collapse of oil prices in the second half of 2014. The figure had plunged to USD1 billion in the first 11 months of last year, accounting for 0.1 percent of China’s total imports.

Meanwhile, China’s exports to Venezuela peaked at USD9.3 billion in 2012 and plunged to USD2.5 billion in 2016. The figure was USD4.9 billion in the 11 months ended Nov. 30, last year, accounting for 0.2 percent of China’s total exports.

In the field of direct investment, the widely circulated claim that China has invested USD60 billion in Venezuela is highly exaggerated. According to the annual ‌statistical bulletin of China’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment‌, China’s direct investment in Venezuela peaked at USD3.5 billion in 2018 and dropped to only USD318 million in 2024, accounting for merely 0.01 percent of its total outward FDI that year.

In the field of contracted projects, China’s total business volume in Venezuela reached USD6 billion in 2013 but fell to just over USD100 million in 2023 and 2024, both accounting for 0.1 percent of its total contracted project business volume in the two years.

In terms of the potential risk of economic and trade interest losses, the impact of the Venezuelan incident on China is not significant. We must face up to the related risk impact on economic and trade interests and miscalculation, but we should not exaggerate the losses and panic.

The US has become a net exporter of oil, while China is the world’s largest oil importer. If the Trump administration wants to turn its control over Venezuela into a profitable business, it must push the future Venezuelan government to improve relations with China to maintain or even expand oil exports to the world’s second-largest economy.

The author of this article is Mei Xinyu, researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce.

Editor: Futura Costaglione