Middle East turmoil: A surprising boost for China-US stability?

The US’s strike on Iran has dealt a blow to China’s strategic interests in the Middle East, casting uncertainty over a potential meeting between the Chinese and US presidents. 

However, academics interviewed believe that China-US relations may instead move towards greater strategic stability, as “China will not underestimate American strength, and the US will continue to give China both face and tangible benefits”. Plans for a meeting between the two leaders in the near future are therefore unlikely to change.

Iran is regarded as one of China’s key strategic partners in the Middle East, with the two countries establishing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in 2016. Before the US launched its attack on Iran on 28 February, Reuters reported that Iran was close to reaching an agreement to purchase CM-302 supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles from China, although this was refuted by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning at a regular press briefing on 2 March.

Data from American think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies show that around 90% of Iran’s oil exports go to China, providing Beijing not only with affordable crude but also with strategic influence in the Middle East. Western media previously reported that China and Iran signed a 25-year cooperation agreement in 2021, under which China agreed to invest US$400 billion in Iran in exchange for a stable oil supply.

After the US and Israel jointly launched strikes on Iran, attention has turned to whether damage to China’s strategic interests in the Middle East could affect US President Donald Trump’s planned visit to China at the end of March. According to the Chinese foreign ministry’s website, Mao reiterated in response to media questions on 2 March that China and the US are in communication regarding interactions between the two heads of state, but did not reveal further information on specific arrangements.

Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based international relations scholar, and Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), both believe that China-US relations will remain broadly stable this year, and that Trump’s visit to China is unlikely to be affected by the US strikes on Iran.

Li said that, in its initial response, the Chinese foreign ministry did not use the word “condemn”, indicating that China is exercising restraint and does not want the Iran incident to negatively impact major bilateral diplomatic engagements between China and the US.

Meanwhile, Shen argued on three grounds that China-US relations will not be disrupted by the turmoil in the Middle East, but may instead become more stable.

Shen told Lianhe Zaobao that, after the US and Israel acted on comprehensive intelligence to launch strikes on Iran, China will not underestimate American strength. He believes that Trump will continue to give face to Beijing as well as tangible benefits — exercising restraint over arms sales to Taiwan ahead of his visit to China and seeking reciprocal gains in dealings with Beijing. 

In the longer term, although the US regards China as its sole competitor, it is likely to adopt a steady approach by maintaining stable relations with China while gradually weakening China’s core circle of partners. Strategic partners such as Venezuela and Iran are already under pressure from Washington, while the Cuban regime faces challenges to its survival. The US is also pressing Ukraine to permanently relinquish occupied territory, in an effort to drive a wedge between China and Russia and to disengage from Europe.

Shen noted that the stability of China-US relations hinges on two factors: the balance of power between the two countries and the rationality of each side. He analysed that the US capture of Venezuela and strikes on Iran have not altered the underlying shared need in both Beijing and Washington for stable and improving bilateral relations. 

Although some observers opined that the US may embark on a China visit with a sense of superiority, Shen argued that Trump’s psychological traits will lead him to display a sort of unconventional humility in order to showcase his “art of the deal”.

He assessed that a China-US leaders’ summit might not produce many results, but would not be entirely fruitless either. He said, “There is room for negotiation on the Taiwan issue. How much Beijing can gain depends on how much the US can get in return”. However, he added that Washington would never agree to a fourth China-US joint communique on Taiwan.

Jodie Wen, a Tsinghua University scholar who studies the US and the Middle East, believes that the US’s attack on Iran does not mean the balance in China-US negotiations would tilt towards Washington. She noted that the legitimacy of the US decision to go to war is questioned internationally, and that if it becomes tied down in a ground war, US military strength would be greatly depleted — ultimately to its detriment. “The Middle East has historically been the graveyard of empires,” she said.

In contrast, Zineb Riboua, research fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, argued that China lies at the heart of the Iran issue. Beijing has spent tens of billions of dollars over many years to turn Iran into a “structural asset” designed to chip away at US military resources in the Pacific.

In her article, she described the US offensive against Iran as the opening act in US-China rivalry and the beginning of America’s restarting of the Indo-Pacific century. She argued that the US’s removal of the Iranian regime is in effect removing a pawn from Beijing’s Taiwan Strait playbook; leaving the Middle East in place would mean a permanent second front in China’s strategy.

NTU’s Li, however, assessed that the US strategic intent in attacking Iran might not necessarily be directed at China, although the actual consequences could indeed increase the pressure China faces in the Asia-Pacific. 

He commented that Iran and the Iranian nuclear question have long consumed a great deal of US policy attention and military resources. If developments in Iran move in Washington’s favour, resources currently committed to the Middle East could be shifted to the Asia-Pacific, thus impacting China-US strategic contest there.

Sung Wen-Ti, a non‑resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, felt that the live capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei carried a stark warning for China: the US military’s technological edge, as well as the wartime logistical advantages provided by the US’s network of allies across different regions of the world “are still considerable”.

Lin Jing, researcher at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore, opined that the US is increasingly inclined to integrate military operations, sanctions, financial regulation and energy policy into a single, interconnected mechanism. This meant that the risks facing China’s overseas interests now stem not only from domestic conditions and regional stability for host countries, but also from the actions of major external powers, which Beijing must watch closely.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “美国打伊朗反让中美关系趋稳 元首会晤计划料不变”.

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