How do you explain the US war against Iran to millions of Chinese viewers? State broadcaster CCTV did it with an AI-generated video animated film. In it, the White Eagle competes with the kingdom of the Persian cats for a crucial resource. He shoots very expensive golden arrows at his bitter enemy and in his frenzy bombs a school building full of fluffy kittens.
When the cats then close the only passage to the outside world, the vassals of the White Eagle start looking for new friends. “From now on we will trade barter or with a new currency,” explains a camel as their caravan crosses the desert. “The world is big, let’s find new allies and new paths.” A voiceover closes the video: “The White Eagle has not realized that true power does not come from using the sword, but from putting it down.”
It fits well with the image that Chinese propaganda portrays about the American war against Iran. The United States is a violent hegemon in decline, causing chaos and uncertainty. China, as a beacon of predictability and stability, compares favorably. Especially for countries in the global South, which are the first to experience the consequences of the energy crisis that caused the war and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
China was able to underline this once again this week with a peace initiative. It presented together with Pakistan, which also presents itself as a peacemaker a five-point plan which called for an end to violence, negotiations, reopening of shipping lanes and a leading role for the United Nations and international law. For the time being, there is little to indicate that the document will have any concrete consequences, but that last reference certainly helps China to emphasize the hypocrisy of the West.
An oil tanker unloads at the port of Qingdao, in China’s eastern province of Shandong.
Photo CN-STR / AFP
Self-interest comes first
In the short term, China seems to mainly benefit from the war, which some conservative American analysts initially claimed a masterstroke was in the American rivalry with Beijing. After Venezuela, China would no longer have a second partner – and cheap oil supplier – in Iran.
But that analysis ignores the pragmatic nature of China’s foreign relations, which cannot be compared with the – at least until recently – close alliances between Western countries, with far-reaching mutual obligations. Although China and Iran maintain close ties, they mainly serve their own interests: cheap oil for China and a market for infrastructure, among other things, and much-needed income and diplomatic support for heavily sanctioned Iran. China can also do excellent business on this basis with a possible new Iranian regime, especially if the country has to be rebuilt after the war.
Years of Xi Jinping’s policies have created a historically large oil supply
Moreover, for China, ties with Tehran have become less important as its interests elsewhere in the Gulf region have grown. The estimated 370,000 Chinese citizens who work in the United Arab Emirates for the many Chinese tech companies that have settled there in recent years, have had to regularly take cover from Iranian drone attacks in recent weeks.
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Moreover, although China – which buys an estimated 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports and even more from the Arab Gulf states – is more dependent than the US on fossil fuel from the Gulf region, the country was well prepared for this shock. Years of Xi Jinping’s policy aimed at strategic independence has created a historically large oil reserve and a wide range of suppliers, of which Russian pipelines are now the most important.
And that oil is a relatively small part of the Chinese energy mixin which coal and rapidly growing sustainable sources form the lion’s share. The latter sector can even benefit if the world accelerates the transition to wind and solar energy due to the energy crisis. Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD raised its foreign sales forecast for this year by 15 percent, to 1.5 million plug-in cars.
Motorists queue for petrol in the Chinese city of Nanjing.
Photo CN-STR / AFp
Emergency reserves and car-free days
The situation is very different among the US’s most important East Asian allies. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan are highly dependent on imports from the Gulf region. Were there emergency reserves used, car-free days considered, and states of emergency declared.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in an interview with Bloomberg even that he wanted to cooperate with China in the exploitation of oil and gas fields in the South China Sea, where both countries are involved in a protracted, and sometimes violent, territorial dispute. In recent years, Marcos has sought confrontation with Beijing and further strengthened military ties with the US. The Philippines could be an important base in the event of a war over Taiwan. But, Marcos said, “our foreign policy is very simple: peace and our national interest.”
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It shows that the war in the Middle East threatens to weaken the American position in the region that successive governments have ruled since Barack Obama (in 2011). the most important geopolitical battleground mentioned. On one cartoon in Chinese state media last month, “Uncle Sam” flounders in a spider web, the threads of which form the word “war.” “Stuck in the Middle East,” is the title.
There are already concrete consequences: the Americans recently withdrew their advanced anti-aircraft system THAAD back from South Korea because it was needed in the Gulf. The installation of those missile installations led to a diplomatic row between Seoul and Beijing in 2017 that still reverberates. And from Japan, the Pentagon moved 3,500 American troops this week arrived in the Gulf regionwhile speculation is rife about the deployment of ground troops. According to Bloomberg, the US has the supply of four hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles postponed to Japan, because they now need it themselves.
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Crisis does have consequences
Yet the war is not all for Chinese advantage. Although the hardest blows from the energy shortage are elsewhere, the price of gasoline has also risen sharply in China and the country has restricted the export of refinery products as a precaution.
The country can survive a short war. But if high oil prices and persistent uncertainty plunge the global economy into crisis, China, as the world’s largest exporting nation, will certainly feel the consequences. The faltering economy – the People’s Congress set a modest growth target for China of approximately 4.5 percent at the beginning of March – is partly kept going by exports.
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Moreover, the escalating war ensures that Trump is completely distracted from the important upcoming visit to Xi. In Beijing, the two should strike a more permanent deal in the mutual tariff battle in which they are embroiled, and which is hurting both sides. At that meeting, China wants to lower US import tariffs, as well as greater access to advanced American technology. With the transactional Trump, it may even see opportunities for concessions around Taiwan, for example an explicit American rejection of independence from the democratically governed island, which Beijing sees as a renegade province.
The visit was initially scheduled for early April, but the US president postponed the trip until mid-May to fully focus on Iran. However, it is highly questionable whether Trump will have China’s full attention by then.
