China’s Learning from the Sanctions Imposed on Venezuela: Lessons in Economic Coercion for Taiwan, the Global Economy, and International Security

Abstract

This research document breaks down, from a geopolitical and geoeconomic perspective, how the People's Republic of China (PRC) has decoded the economic coercion tactics deployed by the United States against Venezuela since 2017. Far from constituting an isolated event in the South American periphery, the Venezuelan scenario served as an invaluable practical laboratory. It allowed strategists in Beijing to calibrate their own vulnerabilities in the face of an eventual economic, financial, or technological war. Through a systematic review based on PRISMA 2020 criteria and a critical discourse analysis approach, we evaluate the intricate architecture of these sanctions and their direct impact on the reconfiguration of Chinese deterrence. Findings irrefutably document that the Asian country accelerated its institutional shielding; this includes the massive boost to alternative payment networks (such as CIPS), the accelerated diversification of its sovereign reserves, and the execution of draconian technological substitution policies for critical nodes, anticipating strangulation scenarios. Projecting these variables, a crisis in the Taiwan Strait—the global epicenter of semiconductor production, dominated by TSMC—would unleash unprecedented global disruptions, even obviating direct military intervention. We conclude that technical preparedness, internal market resilience, and gradual de-dollarization are imperative to mitigate the impact of blockades that today reconfigure the global balance of power silently but relentlessly.