In a Beijing conference room, a risk officer opens an instruction from China’s National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA). The expectation is bureaucratic and blunt: document your exposure to Venezuela; tighten monitoring and be ready for losses. Reuters reported the regulator has been pressing major Chinese lenders for exactly that kind of accounting. (Reuters)

This is what geopolitical risk looks like when it finally hits the balance sheet. Beijing isn’t only watching a government wobble.  It is watching the mechanism that converts exports into repayment start to stall.

For years, China’s overseas lending pitch, especially under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), rested on the simple assumption that contracts outlive politics. The Venezuela episode is a reminder that, in practice, repayment depends on logistics, access to markets, and the willingness of powerful outsiders to let money move.

The situation for Beijing is difficult. If Venezuela is the warning siren, the larger risk to China sits in two places where political succession is imaginable and where U.S. pressure is already organized: Iran and Russia.