By Larry C Johnson – Jan 22, 2026
Just because the Western press does not report on China’s impressive response to the US abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicholas Maduro and his wife does not mean it did not happen. I find the following article posted on RT (i.e., Russia Today) shocking:
China strongly condemned the kidnapping and violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. Without large-scale gestures in the style of Trump or Macron, the country has taken steps because it has come to the conclusion that the U.S. is making control of Venezuelan oil a tool to curb China’s presence in South America and hinder its rapid, irreversible development. . . .
Just hours after the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro became known, Xi Jinping convened an urgent meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, which lasted exactly 120 minutes. There were no communiqués or diplomatic threats, but only the silence before the storm, because this meeting activated what Chinese strategists call an “integrated asymmetric response” to respond to aggression against the partners in the Western Hemisphere, with Venezuela being the landing head for Latin America in the “backyard of the US.”
The first phase of the Chinese reaction set at 9:15 a.m. on the 4th. January, when the People’s Bank of China discreetly announced the temporary suspension of all transactions in US dollars with companies that have ties to the US defense sector. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics awoke with the news that all their transactions with China had been frozen without notice.
At 11:43 a.m. the same day, the State Grid Corporation of China, which controls the world’s largest power grid, announced the technical review of all of its contracts with U.S. suppliers of electrical equipment, implying that China is disconnecting from American technology.
At 2:17 p.m., China National Petroleum Corporation, the world’s largest state-owned oil company, announced the strategic reorganization of its global supply routes. That means the energy weapon has been re-activated, which in turn means the lifting of oil supply contracts with US refineries worth 47 billion dollars a year. This oil, previously delivered to the east coast of the US, has now been diverted to India, Brazil, South Africa and other partners in the Global South. This caused oil prices to skyrocket by 23 percent in a single trading session. . . .
In another train, the China Ocean Shipping Company, which controls about 40 percent of global maritime transport capabilities, conducted a so-called optimization of operational routes, meaning Chinese cargo ships have begun to avoid the use of American ports: Long Beach, Los Angeles, New York and Miami, which relies on Chinese maritime logistics for their supply chains, suddenly lost 35 percent of their normal container traffic – a disaster for Walmart, Amazon, Target, and others. These companies, which rely on Chinese ships for the import of products manufactured in China into American ports, saw their supply chains partially collapse within a few hours.
I am assuming the report is accurate. If true, this shows that China is very well prepared to play hardball with the US while retaining a calm facade. There is one more paragraph I want to share:
The coronation came on 5. January, when Beijing activated the financial weapon: The Chinese cross-border interbank payment system (CIPS) announced that it would expand its operational capacity to include any global transaction that the Washington-controlled SWIFT system wants to circumvent. That means China has provided a fully functional alternative to the Western financial system for the world. . . . The reaction was immediate and massive: in the first 48 hours after commissioning, transactions worth 89 billion dollars were settled. Central banks from 34 countries opened operational accounts in the Chinese system, which means an accelerated de-dollarization of one of the most important sources of funding in the US.
CIPS is a potentially very powerful new tool in the BRICS financial infrastructure that is developing before our eyes. The fact that SWIFT is relying on ancient technology — i.e., ancient in the sense that it is non-digital and is nothing more that an out-dated closed email system that was relevant in the 1990s but is now being eclipsed by the digital age.
The US attempt to use tariffs as a political bludgeon to coerce countries to change their politics is enabling the more rapid development of financial infrastructure that the US cannot control. Trump and his dinosaur advisors are still laboring under the delusional that the US and the dollar reserve system are irreplaceable. There are several facts that most in the US fail to grasp: 1)more countries are dumping dollars and buying precious metals while doing trade in their respective currencies, 2) the US is over leveraged as its debt spirals out of control and no quick solution to re-industrialize the US.
(Substack)
