It wouldn't surprise me at all to see China make a play for intervening in Venezuela to set up a foot hold in South America and use as a base of operations for expansion of their interests into the West.
China has been involved with Venezuela for a while.
China seeks to renegotiate Venezuela loans
https://www.ft.com/content/18169fbe-33da-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153JUNE 19, 2016
China is renegotiating billions of dollars of loans to Venezuela and has met with the country’s political opposition, marking a shift in its approach to a nation it once viewed as a US counterweight in the Americas.
Venezuela is facing one of the worst crises of its 200-year history, with a collapsing economy and political deadlock stoked by the oil price slump. China, which is Caracas’s biggest creditor and has loaned the country $65bn since 2005, has already extended the repayment schedules for debts backed by oil sales....
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Venezuela falls behind on oil-for-loan deals with China, Russia
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/10/venezuela-falls-behind-on-oil-for-loan-deals-with-china-russia.htmlVenezuela's state-run oil company, PDVSA, has fallen months behind on shipments of crude and fuel under oil-for-loan deals with China and Russia, according to internal company documents reviewed by Reuters.
The delayed shipments to such crucial political allies and trading partners - which together have extended Venezuela at least $55 billion in credit - provide new insight into PDVSA's operational failures and their crippling impact on the country's unraveling socialist economy....