Xi’s strategy is closer to the ancient Chinese phrase that notes the benefit of sitting on the mountain and watching the tigers fight: conserve strength while others exhaust themselves, and intervene only if core interests are directly threatened.
Beijing doesn’t think of alliances the way the US does. Partnerships are tools to secure economic and strategic resources, not to provide security commitments. The idea that it would swoop in to rescue either Iran’s clerics or Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro — seized by US forces in January — misinterprets how China works. That reticence was on display during last year’s Iran-Israeli confrontation, when it chose cautious diplomacy and official statements over material military support.
This time, too, it has had little to say beyond criticizing the US and Israel’s attacks and the killing of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while urging Iranian restraint. Beijing is more important to Tehran than the other way around. It serves as a crucial economic lifeline for the heavily sanctioned state as its largest buyer of oil. Yet Iranian crude makes up only about 13% of China’s seaborne oil intake — significant, but ultimately replaceable.
Beijing has drawn Iran into blocs like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, institutions that help China chip away at American influence while broadening the appeal of Xi’s economic and political model across the Global South. It leaned heavily into this image in 2023, when it brokered the Saudi-Iran détente, presenting itself as a regional power capable of facilitating peace without US involvement.
But these relationships are transactional. “The Middle East is not a paramount security or foreign policy priority for the Chinese in the way it is for the Europeans and the Americans,” Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project think tank, told me. Iran has been useful as part of a loose alignment that complicates US dominance, he said, but it was never worth direct military confrontation or crippling secondary sanctions.
The diplomatic record reflects that. Xi has paid only one state visit to Iran since 2013, as the Brookings Institution notes — in 2016, when the two elevated ties with investments and cooperation. That stands in contrast to his frequent travel to major economic and strategic partners.Xi will also be keen to prevent Iran from becoming a new flashpoint in US-China relations, particularly with a Trump visit expected later this month. Instead, he will focus on extending the temporary trade truce the two leaders negotiated in South Korea last October, so as to convert that agreement into more durable relief from American tariffs and technology restrictions.
Most urgent of all of Xi’s priorities is Taiwan. In a recent phone call, he urged Trump to handle arms sales to Taipei with “utmost caution.” Reports that the Trump administration is delaying a multibillion arms package to the self-governed island ahead of the summit won’t have gone unnoticed in Beijing.
Unification is central to Xi’s political legacy, and it is one of the many reasons Chinese strategists will study the operation in Iran closely. If the People’s Liberation Army were to launch military action across the Taiwan Strait, preventing US forces from deploying quickly or launching a strike, will be critical. Beijing has invested heavily in modernizing the PLA, but remains far behind in global intelligence reach and real-world combat experience. Both Iran and Venezuela have offered timely reminders of American power.
There are risks for China from continued instability in the Middle East. Iran supplies about 5% of global oil, and has the ability to restrict maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint critical to global energy flows. A complete outage could see prices jump around 20%, according to Bloomberg Economics, while a closure of Hormuz might push crude toward $100 a barrel or higher.
A wider regional conflict will expose other vulnerabilities. Beijing gets about a quarter of all of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas and is worried about regular supplies. Any prolonged shutdown would complicate an already tepid economic recovery.
Chinese leaders are also deeply sensitive to images of social unrest toppling regimes. If Iranians were to “take over” their government, as Trump has urged, Beijing would worry less about geopolitics and more about the possibility — however remote — of contagion, even in the tightly surveilled and controlled society.
The broader lesson Beijing will draw from this is that only the strong survive in Trump’s world. Beefing up its already extensive nuclear arsenal will take on fresh urgency, while it simultaneously accelerates technological self-reliance to reduce exposure to America.
The strikes on Tehran are not a setback for China. They are a lesson to absorb — and, if the US becomes distracted in a prolonged Middle East conflict, an opportunity to exploit.
Views expressed here are the author’s own, and not EconomicTimes.com’s