The "Great Helmsman" has fallen, and from the ruins of the Palacio de Miraflores emerges a Sorbonne-educated pragmatist with a singular, audacious blueprint: to do for Venezuela what Deng Xiaoping did for China.

In a stunning geopolitical pivot that marks the definitive end of the Maduro era, interim President Delcy Rodríguez has unveiled a "reform and opening up" agenda that effectively dismantles the rigid statism of her predecessor. Speaking to a shaken nation just days after Nicolás Maduro’s departure—termed a "kidnapping" by loyalists but a liberation by the opposition—Rodríguez invoked the spirit of China’s 1978 economic miracle, signaling that the Bolivarian Revolution is no longer about dogma, but survival.

The Anatomy of a Pivot

"Where Chavismo has had to rectify itself, it does so," Rodríguez declared, her rhetoric stripping away the bombast of the past decade. [...](asc_slot://start-slot-3)It was a sentence that echoed Deng Xiaoping’s famous exhortation to "emancipate the mind," delivered after the catastrophe of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. For Venezuela, the parallels are visceral: a traumatized populace, hyperinflationary debris, and a desperate need for capital.

Rodríguez, now dubbed "Delxiaoping" by observers in Caracas and Beijing, is not offering democracy—she is offering functionality. Her administration has already drafted radical amendments to the hydrocarbon laws, designed to bypass state-owned PDVSA’s rot and allow Western supermajors direct access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves. It is a transactional olive branch to the very powers her party once demonized.

• The Francophile Factor: Unlike the bus-driver-turned-president Maduro, Rodríguez is a creature of the European elite, educated in Paris and comfortable in the salons of power. This cultural dexterity is her primary weapon in wooing a skeptical West.
• The "Face Wash" Critique: "They are trying to make her palatable," warns Andrés Izarra, a former Chávez minister now in exile. Critics argue this "reform" is merely a survival strategy for the ruling clique—a way to wash the blood of the feared SEBIN intelligence agency, which Rodríguez once oversaw, from their hands.

Triangulating the Superpowers

The geopolitical calculus is precise. By invoking the Chinese model, Rodríguez secures the continued patronage of Beijing, reassuring President Xi Jinping that Venezuela remains a stable, albeit evolving, partner. Simultaneously, she has opened a backchannel to Washington.

"Venezuela has the right to relations with China, with Russia, with Cuba... and with the United States," she asserted, a statement that would have been heresy a month ago. This triangulation suggests a Venezuela that is neither a pariah nor a puppet, but a transactional state open for business.

For the average Venezuelan, however, the high politics of "Delxiaoping" matter less than the price of flour. If Rodríguez can deliver the economic boom that Deng delivered to the Chinese peasantry, her dark past as the enforcer of the dictatorship may well be amnestied by a weary public. But if this is merely a rebranding of the same kleptocracy, the "opening up" will likely lead not to prosperity, but to a final, violent collapse.