washington — As thousands of people in Venezuela protested the results of Sunday’s election, many in China were watching and commenting on social media platforms.

While social media are tightly censored in China and most comments echoed support for incumbent Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, videos of the protests spread widely, and some voiced support for the protesters. Others used the opportunity to subtly criticize China’s authoritarian system of government, pointing out the country’s lack of free and open elections.

In posts on Weibo, which is similar to X, the rebukes were not direct but veiled in sarcasm.

One poster said, “I never would have expected that they would hold elections.” To which, another responded, “There are only a handful of countries that don’t have a general election.”

Whole-process democracy

Another post on Weibo asked sarcastically, “Why do they still have elections? They definitely haven’t implemented the whole-process democracy” — a concept first proposed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2019.

In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has justified its rule by claiming that China’s “full-process democracy” is a more comprehensive democratic system than Western democracy.

According to the 2023 Global Democracy Index released by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Venezuela ranked 142nd out of nearly 170 countries and regions. China ranked 148th.

Many netizens also expressed their support for the protesters in Venezuela. 

“You need to fight for and protect your own rights,” said one Weibo comment.

“It’s only a matter of time. The people can’t keep being deceived,” said another.

In the wake of Sunday’s vote, Maduro and opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, also known as Edmundo Gonzalez, have both claimed victory.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner with 51% support, awarding him a third six-year term. But Gonzalez said he won more than 70% of the vote. Independent polling agencies also called Maduro’s victory unreliable, and foreign observers have urged election authorities to release a full count.

Governments from Latin American countries, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, issued a similar call in a joint statement, saying a transparent vote count was the only way to ensure the results respected the will of Venezuelan voters.

Disinformation spreads

In addition to taking the opportunity to criticize the Chinese government, some on social media spread unsubstantiated allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was secretly involved in the Venezuelan protests.

“Supporters of the US-backed opposition that lost the Venezuelan election are currently launching large-scale violent and vandalizing activities across the country,” one netizen said on Weibo.

Some, however, disagreed with the claim that the U.S. was secretly inciting the incident. 

One Weibo user reacted to the accusation with sarcasm.

“Of course, the CIA is behind this. The Venezuelan people, one or two, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people, are all puppets. They have no independent will and are all manipulated by the United States,” said one post.

Victory and ‘grave concerns’ 

In addition to the divide over the results online, there was also a sharp contrast in how the United States and China and its state media responded to the election results.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has expressed “grave concerns” about the results and has called for transparency in the vote count.

Xi, however, congratulated Maduro, saying, “China will, as always, firmly support Venezuela’s efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, national dignity and social stability, and firmly support Venezuela’s just cause of opposing external interference.” 

Venezuelans unhappy with Maduro’s victory have taken to the streets across the country, including near the presidential palace in the capital, Caracas. A local monitoring group, the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict, said Monday that it had recorded a total of 187 demonstrations in 20 of the country’s 23 states.

Chinese state media have not covered the protests significantly. The Global Times said Blinken was “changing his face” by going from calling for “respect for the democratic process” before the votes were counted to questioning Maduro’s victory and expressing “grave concern” about the results.

However, when contrasting Blinken’s views before and after the elections, the newspaper only quoted part of the remarks that Blinken made on July 28 before the results were announced. In those remarks and after the vote, his concern was the same.

“The Venezuelan people deserve an election that genuinely reflects their will, free from any manipulation,” Blinken told reporters in Japan. “The international community is going to be watching this very closely. We urge all parties to honor their commitments and to respect the democratic process.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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