The US operation against Venezuela will encourage China to strengthen its territorial claims to areas such as Taiwan and parts of the South China Sea, but will not accelerate a potential invasion of the self-ruled island, analysts said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's considerations on Taiwan and the timeline he sets for himself are independent of the situation in Latin America and are influenced more by China's domestic situation than by US actions, experts said.
However, according to them, US President Donald Trump's bold operation on Saturday to detain Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gives China an unexpected opportunity that Beijing is likely to use in the near future to intensify its criticism towards Washington and strengthening its own positions in the international arena.
Moreover, Beijing can use Trump's actions to defend its positions vis-à-vis the United States on territorial issues, including Taiwan, Tibet and islands in the East and South China Seas.
"A cheap way" for China to assert itself
"Washington's consistent and unchanging argument is that China's actions violate international law, but now the Americans themselves are violating it," said William Yang, an analyst at the Brussels-based NGO International Crisis Group.
"This really creates a lot of opportunities and cheap means for China to challenge the US positions in the future," the analyst said.
China claims that democratically governed Taiwan is its breakaway province – something that the island's authorities reject, and Beijing also claims almost the entire South China Sea - a position that pits it against several Southeast Asian countries that also have claims to parts of the key maritime trade corridor.
China's Foreign Ministry and Taiwan Affairs Office, as well as the Taiwanese president's office, did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Beijing has condemned Trump's strikes on Venezuela, saying they violate international law and threaten peace and security in Latin America. China has demanded that the United States release Maduro and his wife, who are being held in a high-security prison in New York awaiting trial.
Hours before his capture, Maduro met with a delegation of high-ranking Chinese officials in Caracas, according to photos he posted on his Instagram account.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has not yet responded to requests for comment on the whereabouts of the delegation, which includes Beijing's special representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, Qiu Xiaoqi.
China's official Xinhua News Agency described the U.S. operation yesterday as a "pure example of hegemonic action."
"The U.S. invasion has practically demonstrated to everyone that the so-called rules-based international order defended by the United States is nothing more than a "predatory order based on American interests," said Xinhua.
"China is not the United States, and Taiwan is not Venezuela"
Taiwan, in particular, has come under increasing pressure from Beijing. Last week, China surrounded the island in its largest-ever military exercises, demonstrating Beijing's ability to isolate it from outside help in the event of a conflict.
However, analysts say they do not expect China to take advantage of the Venezuela situation to escalate its actions to an attack in the near future.
"Taiwan's return depends on China's developing but still insufficient capabilities, rather than on what Trump does on a distant continent," said Shi Yinghong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University. in Beijing.
Neil Thomas, a China policy expert at the Asia Society, said China sees Taiwan as an internal matter, making it unlikely to invoke the U.S. actions against Venezuela as a precedent for a possible military operation against the island.
"Beijing will want to demonstrate the contrast between itself and Washington to support its position that it seeks peace, development and moral superiority," Thomas said, adding: "Xi Jinping doesn't care about Venezuela any more than he does about China. He hopes it will become a quagmire for the United States."
Wang Tinyu, a senior lawmaker from Taiwan's ruling party who is a member of the parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, dismissed the idea that China could follow the U.S. lead and attack Taiwan.
"China has never lacked hostility towards Taiwan, but it simply lacks the means", Wang wrote on "Facebook".
"China is not the United States, and Taiwan is certainly not Venezuela. If China could really take back the island, it would have done so long ago," the lawmaker added.
However, the situation increases the risks for Taiwan and could prompt Taipei to seek greater protection from the Trump administration, observers said.
The Chinese social media platform "Weibo" was hotly debated yesterday about the US operation, with several users saying China should learn from Trump's actions.
Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Taiwan University, said he expected the Taipei government to express moderate support for the US actions in Venezuela. Taiwanese authorities have not yet made any official statements on the matter.
"What I really think Trump's actions could do is make it easier for Xi Jinping's rhetoric in the future to justify actions against Taiwan," the professor said.
Translated from English: Alexey Margoevsky, BTA