Singapore: Hours before US forces seized Nicolás Maduro in his compound in Caracas, the Venezuelan dictator was entertaining Beijing’s special envoy for Latin American affairs at the presidential palace and praising the unbreakable ties between the two countries.

“I thank President Xi Jinping for his continued brotherhood, like an older brother,” Maduro told Chinese diplomat Qiu Xiaoqi, according to CNN, as the pair smiled, shook hands and exchanged gifts in the gilded halls of the Miraflores Palace.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro meets Chinese diplomat Qiu Xiaoqi in Caracas on January 3, hours before his capture by US special forces. Credit: Instagram @nicolasmaduro

The encounter has been preserved on Maduro’s social media accounts for what is surely a discomforting posterity for Beijing, given the proximity of Xi’s official to the US military operation, evidently unaware of its imminence.

The next image the world would see was of Maduro shackled and blindfolded aboard a US warship, circulated by US President Donald Trump on social media, and bound for a New York courtroom on narco-conspiracy charges, where he would declare himself a “kidnapped president” and a “prisoner of war”.

As these events unfolded, Beijing’s reaction was stunned outrage. It has channelled this through its propaganda machinery, denouncing Washington as the world’s cop gone rogue once again. With Trump vowing to temporarily “run” Venezuela and take control of its oil reserves, Chinese state media have made easy work of chalking this up as yet another example of US imperialism where international laws and sovereignty hold only as far as they align with........

© The Sydney Morning Herald