With just a few weeks left before President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, it seems that the U.S. war in the Middle East will, in all likelihood, remain unfinished business, if not a major obstacle to addressing longstanding issues between the two countries.
There is little question that the war and its consequences for global trade will be agenda item number one for that much-anticipated summit between the world’s two most powerful leaders. While the war is certain to subsume, distract from, and push other pressing matters off that very crowded agenda, it could nevertheless set a positive tone for these crucial discussions by demonstrating the urgent need for the superpowers to work together when it comes to tamping down regional conflicts across the globe. Many have speculated that the war would “undermine the summit,” but so far at least, both Beijing and Washington have worked hard to keep U.S.-China frictions from getting out of hand during this delicate period.
To be sure, the tensions are palpable — quite in keeping with the unfortunate norm of fraught U.S.-China relations over the last decade. For instance, Trump has been vocal about his concern that Chinese weapons could be sent to Iran. China has denied his allegations.
It is true that China has likely been steadily supplying Iran with components for the latter’s home-made weapons, which have proven quite impressive in this latest war. There is, moreover, the allegation that China has actively assisted Iran in building out its factories for arms fabrication. And then there is the sensitive issue of intelligence sharing, whereby Beijing’s satellites could be supplying Tehran with real-time targeting information on U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region. That’s a troubling allegation, for sure, but such accusations should be put in perspective given that China has ample experience with proxy wars, including against the U.S., and could supply powerful finished weapons to Iran if it wished to play a more aggressive role. China could even deploy its own formidable naval forces to directly challenge the U.S. blockade, prompting a plausible if still unlikely “eyeball- to- eyeball moment .” But it hasn’t.
Beijing has, however, criticized the U.S. blockade to counter Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz as “a dangerous and irresponsible move [that] will only aggravate confrontation, escalate tension, undermine the already fragile ceasefire and further jeopardize safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.” Xi has articulated fears that the “law of the jungle” could prevail if the war continues. He also coordinated with Moscow, not only to ensure that Beijing would still get sufficient supplies of oil and gas, but also in vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution to condemn Tehran’s new regime for the strait, suggesting that it was one-sided.
Moreover, Xi’s recent meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who is currently Europe’s fiercest critic of the war to the point of denying U.S. forces base access to support the war effort, is likely not coincidental. Beijing has shown itself to be quite adept at taking advantage of Washington’s missteps on the world stage to make geopolitical and geoeconomic gains. As the Economist magazine cover stated crisply: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
And yet the U.S. and China are not enemies and in this case share a number of goals, not least keeping the global economy from careening off the looming cliff. Thus, there is considerable evidence that Beijing is attempting, behind the scenes, to help mitigate the conflict and even bring it to a swift conclusion. Beijing seems to have played a major role in twisting Iran’s arm to participate in the war’s first ceasefire and the subsequent Islamabad talks. Indeed, it’s well known that China enjoys extensive influence in Pakistan, as well as in Iran. At the same time, China has good relations with the Gulf monarchies, so its position is quite a bit more nuanced and balanced than many Americans seem to appreciate. On a recent call with the Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Xi asserted emphatically, “the Strait of Hormuz should remain open to normal navigation.”
More than a few Western commentators have sought to portray the current Middle East war as part of the larger U.S.-China struggle for global hegemony. According to that reading, Washington should push for its maximalist aims and continue to try to overthrow the regime in Tehran for the purpose of significantly reducing Chinese influence in the Middle East. However, that view grossly exaggerates China’s aims in the region and beyond. It might be true that China is not entirely averse to the U.S. getting stuck in another Middle East quagmire, but the related instability has major deleterious impacts for Chinese diplomacy as well as its ambitious commercial investments throughout the region.
China’s posture in the Middle East turns out to be relatively benign. Beijing has established only one military base in the whole region ( the U.S. currently has 19 ), and it is located just down the street from an American installation in the East African micro-state of Djibouti. It is difficult to assume aggressive intent from such a modest presence. And contrary to conventional wisdom, China has acted with significant restraint in resisting the temptation to sell Iran major weapons systems. Thankfully, cooler heads have thus far prevailed in both Beijing and Washington. Both superpowers are rightly focused on the single economic imperative that unites them. Ideally, they would find time in mid-May during the summit to talk about the several, genuinely dangerous major flashpoints dividing them, whether in the South China Sea or on the Korean Peninsula — and, yes, most of all the Gordian Knot of Taiwan.
Still, a silver lining to the tragic, unnecessary, and illegal U.S. war against Iran that has put the world economy at serious risk is that it powerfully instructs both superpowers to focus on pragmatic compromise in order to keep their rivalry under control. That is likely a lesson that will require constant reinforcement, but a stronger foundation can be set in place with a positive bilateral U.S.-China summit in the coming weeks.