Beijing —
When U.S. and Israeli bombs first started falling on Iran in late February, Chinese leaders were staring at the very real possibility that another friendly government would be decapitated, just as had happened in Venezuela just a few weeks earlier.
After about four months, that perspective has changed dramatically. The United States and Iran have reached a tentative agreement after weeks of peace talks, but the regime in Tehran remains in place and the war is widely seen as exposing the limits of American power.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s own diplomatic influence appears to be growing, hosting parades of foreign leaders, positioning itself as a supporter of peace, and even winning repeated praise from US President Donald Trump for its response to war.
The world’s second-largest economy has weathered the historic conflict-triggered energy crisis better than many of its neighbors, particularly due to its rich strategic oil reserves and adoption of green technology and electric vehicles.
China’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the announcement of the US-Iran deal in comments this week, with a spokesperson saying China was “ready” to play an active role in “returning peace and tranquility” to the Middle East.
When asked whether the Chinese government was involved in the agreement, Spokesperson Lin Jian declined to confirm a specific role. But he also did not hesitate to point out China’s “tireless” efforts to end the war, including the four-point peace proposal announced by leader Xi Jinping in April.
And the praise didn’t just emanate from Beijing.
“I want to thank China, President Xi. President Xi has remained neutral, completely neutral. I appreciate that,” President Trump said at a G7 press conference in France on Wednesday, noting that the Chinese leader did not use his naval power to counter the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.
“They didn’t do that. President Xi helped me. He tried to help, and I think he probably contributed to the solution,” Trump added.
China took a cautious diplomatic path during the conflict. It condemned the US and Israeli attacks on Iran and continued to purchase Iranian crude oil in defiance of US sanctions. But it also kept communication open with players on both sides.
As the conflict drags on, a number of foreign leaders have visited Beijing, including Trump last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi a few days ago, and the leader of Pakistan, the conflict’s main mediator.
In the early stages of negotiations, the Iranian government was keen to secure Chinese support as a guarantor of the peace deal, but Beijing has shown little interest in playing such a formal and potentially onerous role.
On Wednesday, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi spoke by phone with Aragushi and called for navigation through the Strait of Hormuz to be “appropriately handled.”
“The dawn of peace has come. The key to the next step is for all parties to truly fulfill their commitments and eliminate interference from all sides,” Wang said.
It is unclear whether or to what extent Beijing used its diplomatic weight to take back channels toward the latest deal, which was formally signed on Wednesday and began a 60-day period to negotiate the final terms of the deal.
But for Beijing, these highly public visits amplified the message that while other countries are at war, China is a responsible world power and power broker.
As the two countries enter the next phase of negotiations, observers are watching closely to see what exactly the United States has gained from the conflict that has caused so much damage to the global economy.
Even in China, where opposition to the U.S.-led world order is a tenet of foreign policy, political thinkers are debating how the conflict has affected America’s place on the world stage.
Some experts have questioned whether this conflict is a so-called “Suez moment” for the United States. This refers to Britain’s loss of control of the Suez Canal in the 1950s, widely seen as a precursor to Britain’s international decline and the decline of the United States as a world power.
“Are the scenes that cast a shadow over the British Empire during the Suez crisis now being recreated for the United States in the Strait of Hormuz?” asked Sun Degang, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, in an op-ed published in China’s state-run newspaper Global Times on Tuesday.
“Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has become the world’s ‘sole superpower,'” Son said. But this time, he wrote, “U.S. military power has not proven to be as overwhelmingly powerful as Washington had imagined,” while the absence of a key ally to support the war is a sign that “the U.S.-led global alliance system is showing increasing signs of fragmentation.”
This is an issue that is being debated in the West, but in China some voices are expressing views that Beijing has learned from Washington’s wars.
“China has no interest in wearing the ‘halo of the victor’ in distant Middle East wars,” political commentator Hu Xijin wrote on the social media platform Weibo earlier this week.
However, he said the conflict has affected the world’s perception of China, demonstrating the success of China’s “strategic plan” to overcome the energy shock and the appeal of a peaceful “development path.”
Hu also wrote that the war had “severely reduced” the United States’ overall deterrence with respect to Taiwan, noting that the United States has limited ammunition stockpiles and is unable to form a Western coalition even against an isolated adversary like Iran.
China claims autonomous Taiwan as its own and has not ruled out the possibility of seizing the democratic island by force.
“What leverage does the United States have to persuade its European allies to confront China in the interests of the United States?” Hu wrote.
How China will respond to the decline of the United States is an open question.
Beijing, which has long positioned itself as a champion of a “multipolar world,” is likely to use the conflict to push for another change it wants to see in the world: an end to a security environment dominated by the United States and its allies.
Throughout the war, however, China sought to carefully manipulate its own interests rather than taking the lead in resolving the conflict or overtly choosing sides.
China has used rhetoric to support its long-time partner Iran, criticized the United States for provoking the conflict, and held multiple calls and talks with Gulf states attacked by Iran.
China is widely seen to have pushed Iran toward talks with Washington earlier this spring, even though Chinese companies have been helping Iran acquire arms, according to the U.S. government. The Chinese government broadly denies providing weapons to countries in conflict.
Despite this assessment, and despite China’s long-held position as the largest buyer of Iranian oil, it may be a testament to Beijing’s influence and carefully calibrated balancing act that President Xi was able to invite President Trump to a friendly meeting last month.
But Chinese observers also say a potential “Suez moment” for the United States does not mean China will automatically rise to the top of the world order. And Chinese officials and analysts have long said that Beijing does not want to become a superpower in the mold of the United States.
“The United States remains the most powerful external actor in the Middle East. What has changed is that the United States now requires much greater political, military, economic, and reputational costs to gain that advantage,” Sun Chenghao, a research fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security Strategy in Beijing, told CNN.
He said the conflict could make China’s worldview, which emphasizes sovereignty, non-interference, political solutions and development-oriented security, more attractive to many countries.
“However, credibility will not only be built on criticism of U.S. actions, but will also depend on China’s ability to offer realistic diplomatic solutions, protect energy security, and help create the conditions for de-escalation.”
