BEIJING — President Donald Trump’s much-anticipated meeting with China’s Xi Jinping will face new tensions after a US-Israeli attack on Iran killed its top pro-China leader.
It is the second time in two months that the United States has taken military action against one of China’s major economic partners, following the sudden arrest in January of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
But China has largely toned down its response to tougher statements, as it did after the attack in Caracas despite warm relations with Venezuela.
China “is proving to be an unreasonable friend to its authoritarian allies,” said Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China under President Joe Biden, X said.
Experts say that while China is concerned about the Iran conflict, it may not see it as worth jeopardizing Trump’s upcoming visit, which the White House says is scheduled to begin on March 31. Both Trump and Xi want to extend the fragile trade deal between the world’s two largest economies.
Beijing has not yet confirmed the dates of the trip, which is likely to take the US deep into the Iran occupation that Trump has said could last “four to five weeks” or longer.
“I haven’t heard of any plan to postpone or cancel that visit,” Wang Huiyao, founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization, a nongovernmental think tank in Beijing, told NBC News in an interview Wednesday.
If anything, he said, the Iran conflict gives even greater urgency to the meeting between China, the Middle East’s biggest trading partner, and the US, the region’s biggest security partner.
Although China has long opposed Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, it has served as the basis for sanctions on Iran, a “comprehensive strategic partner” with which it signed a 25-year cooperation agreement through 2021. China has since initiated an agreement to restore diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
About 80% of Iran’s crude oil exports go to China, the world’s largest energy importer, helping to keep Tehran’s economy afloat. But China is far from dependent on Tehran, as Iranian oil accounts for only about 13% of China’s total oil imports.
China’s relationship with Iran is particularly “functional” in nature, said Peiyu Yang, an assistant professor of Arabic studies at George Mason University in Virginia who studies China’s history and cultural ties to the Middle East.
“It’s not based on a level of opinion or opinion,” he said. “It’s very much based on economic interests.”
China – which has confirmed the death of one of its citizens in Tehran and has evacuated 3,000 others from Iran – has condemned the US-Israeli strikes as a violation of Iran’s sovereignty and international law. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and “promoting regime change” was unacceptable.
But so far, China has offered Iran little more than lip service, underscoring its unwillingness to challenge US war on the world stage.
“These countries are not lying. They know that China cannot be trusted as a security partner,” said Ahmed Aboudouh, fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House think tank in London. “They see you as a development partner, economic partner, trade partner, technology partner, but not military.”
Beijing also criticized Iran’s response to the strikes, which “have a direct impact on China’s interests,” Aboudouh said.
In a phone call Monday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Wang urged Iran to “consider the legitimate concerns of neighboring countries.”
China has huge investments in energy-rich Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where Iran’s retaliatory strikes have hit civilian targets.
Although its Iranian oil imports are easily replaced, China gets almost half of its oil from the Middle East as a whole. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping lane that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil production, “would be a big blow to China’s oil supply,” Yang said.
China may benefit, however, if the US is locked into protracted conflicts in the Middle East. That “may reduce strategic pressure” from Washington regarding China’s military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, said William Yang, the International Crisis Group’s senior Northeast Asia analyst.
A distracted US could leave room for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, an island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. The US is Taiwan’s biggest arms supplier and international supporter, but has long maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity about whether it will defend the island from a Chinese attack.
A prolonged conflict could also eliminate the bulk of US weapons that act as a deterrent against China’s military, said Yang, who is based in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital.
A war with Iran could also strengthen China’s efforts to present itself as an alternative to American global leadership.
The Global South is losing confidence in the Trump administration because its actions in Venezuela and Iran show that “coercion is on the table, and it can be used at any time,” Aboudouh said.
For now, experts say, China is taking a wait-and-see approach and will adapt as the situation in Iran changes.
Although the pro-American regime in Iran may present some challenges, Yang of the Crisis Group said, “Beijing will be able to build a wonderful new relationship with whoever comes to power in Tehran eventually.”
Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.
