On Thursday, through the words of Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun, China reiterated its “full opposition” to a possible U.S. attack on Iran. “All sides, especially Israel, stop fighting immediately,” the official said. These statements follow last Saturday’s statements by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who called Israeli attacks “unacceptable” and “a violation of international law,” and also offered Chinese support to “safeguard [Iran’s] national sovereignty, defend its legitimate rights and interests and ensure the security of its people.” The positions expressed by the two cabinet members were confirmed by President Xi Jinping, who spoke on the sidelines of a summit held in Kazakhstan.
China’s role as a rival to the United States on the global stage is now clear. In the latter’s view, Beijing has carved out the role of Washington’s friend-of-the-enemies country as well as the would-be leader of the “losers of globalization,” aka the countries of the global South. In this simplification, the trend is clear: enmity with Israel and sympathy for the Palestinian/Shiite cause. But it is interesting to understand the extent to which Beijing has interests in the Israeli-Iranian war. And apart from those of an ideal, anti-American nature, there do not seem to be many.
Iran and China have increased their strategic cooperation in recent years. For example, in 2017 the People’s Liberation Army Navy and the Navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran held a joint military exercise in the eastern part of the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman; the first had been in 2014 in another area of the Persian Gulf. Exercises were repeated in the following years and culminated in the signing of an economic-military cooperation agreement in 2021.
In addition, China buys 90 percent of the oil produced by Iran at a capped price and in Chinese currency, which is under Western sanctions. It should be considered, however, that Tehran is only the sixth supplier for Beijing. The Chinese interest is instead more clearly discernible regarding the security of the Strait of Hormuz, through which half of its supply passes. This would become very difficult to manage if hostilities were to reach higher levels than at present. In that case, Iran would likely give rise to threats of closing the strait, which would cause a potentially very damaging increase in energy prices for the Chinese economy.
Beijing thus has an undoubtedly rhetorical but also a practical interest in containing the confrontation. But in the worst-case scenario of U.S. entry into the conflict, it is currently very difficult for the People’s Republic to decide to enter in its turn directly, other than by the sale of armaments. The only futuristic/dystopian (or at least one would hope) reason why Beijing might wish for a further deflagration of the conflict would be that, following the outbreak of a further war in which the United States would become involved, the Chinese apparatus would have its own room to maneuver for a showdown over Taiwan.
Otherwise, the primary interest seems to be to prevent the war from continuing, if only to avoid having the additional entanglement of a conflict that, except for Israel and a very few others, no one else seems to want.
