‘If Middle East Is Unstable, World Will Not Be at Peace': How China Views the Israel-Iran War

Time​ Magazine

4 hours ago

Iran's friends don't like the war decimating Tehran, but they're not ready to join the fight against Israel and potentially the U.S.
Instead, Russia and now China have urged deescalation, emphasizing the dangerous consequences the escalating conflict could have on the whole world.
'If the Middle East is unstable, the world will not be at peace,' Chinese President Xi Jinping said Thursday. 'If the conflict escalates further, not only will the conflicting parties suffer greater losses, but regional countries will also suffer greatly.'
'The warring parties, especially Israel, should cease fire as soon as possible to prevent a cycle of escalation and resolutely avoid the spillover of the war,' Xi added.
Xi's comments came in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which both leaders called for a ceasefire, according to a readout by China's foreign ministry. Earlier this week, Russia warned that Israel's attacks have brought the world 'millimeters' from nuclear calamity, and Putin urged Trump against attacking Iran, as the President is mulling direct U.S. military engagement in the war that has already killed hundreds in Iran and dozens in Israel.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that Putin and Xi 'strongly condemn Israel's actions, which violate the U.N. Charter and other norms of international law.' Ushakov added that Xi expressed support for Putin's suggestion to mediate the conflict, an offer Trump said he has rejected.
China, like Russia, has also positioned itself as a potential peacebroker, though experts say it's unlikely Israel would accept Beijing as a neutral conciliator, given its past criticisms of Israel and ties with Iran.
Here's what to know about how China has responded so far to the conflict and what it may see is at stake.
Rhetorical but not material support
'Iran doesn't need communiqués or declarations, but concrete help, like anti-aircraft systems or fighter jets,' Andrea Ghiselli, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the University of Exeter, told France 24. But communiqués and declarations are all China is likely to offer, experts tell TIME.
William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen, tells TIME that China's lack of military support should not come as a surprise.
China has historically followed a policy of non-interference, focusing more on domestic issues while aiming to avoid entanglement in protracted foreign conflicts. Earlier this year, China similarly called on both India and Pakistan, the latter being an ' ironclad friend ' of China, to show restraint. And while it has been accused of providing ' very substantial ' support to Russia in its war against Ukraine, China has maintained that it doesn't provide weapons or troops to its neighbor. (Reports suggest, however, that its material support has included lethal systems.)
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the White House doesn't see 'any signs' of China providing military support to Iran 'at this moment in time.'
Instead, China has offered words. Beijing has been 'harshly critical' of Israel, says Figueroa. In separate calls with his Iranian and Israeli counterparts over the past weekend, after Israel launched an attack on Friday against Iran, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that China 'explicitly condemns Israel's violation of Iran's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.'
It has also publicly advised the U.S. against greater involvement in the conflict.
'The heating up of the Middle East region serves no one's interests,' Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Tuesday. 'To fan up the flames, use threats and exert pressure does not help deescalate the situation and will only aggravate tensions and enlarge the conflict.'
'The international community, especially influential major countries, should uphold a fair position and a responsible attitude to create the necessary conditions for promoting a ceasefire and returning to dialogue and negotiation so as to prevent the regional situation from sliding into the abyss and triggering a greater disaster,' a Chinese state-media editorial declared on Thursday.
China's diplomatic response reflects its priority to 'lower the temperature,' says Figueroa, particularly in tensions with the U.S.
Diplomatic limitations
China has sought to deepen its investments and influence in the Middle East over the years, which has raised the expectations of its regional diplomacy to 'sky high' levels, says Figueroa. But while Beijing touted brokering a historic truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, the task before it now is much taller.
Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, said China is 'ready to play a constructive role' in resolving the conflict, according to foreign ministry readouts of his calls with both Iran and Israel, but unlike with Saudi Arabia and Iran, Figueroa says, Israel has expressed no interest in negotiating a resolution. And even if Israel was interested in coming to the table, China is unlikely to be seen as a neutral arbiter given its ties with Iran, criticisms of Israel including over Gaza, and ongoing global power competition with the U.S., Israel's biggest ally.
China has developed strong economic ties with Iran over the years, becoming Iran's largest trading partner and export market, especially for oil—a critical lifeline for Iran as the U.S. has placed severe economic sanctions on the country. Iran joined BRICS, the intergovernmental group China has viewed as an alternative collective of emerging powers to the Western-oriented G7, in 2024; joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Beijing-backed security group, in 2023; and the two countries signed a 25-year cooperative agreement in 2021.
While China has also maintained an economic relationship with Israel—China is Israel's second-biggest trading partner and the two countries have had an 'innovative comprehensive partnership' since 2017—Figueroa says it's 'not close enough to have a serious influence over Israel's actions.'
When asked about the possibility of China acting as a mediator, Israel's Ambassador to Beijing Eli Belotserkovsky told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, 'at this stage, we are concentrating on the military campaign. This is our main concern at the moment, and we need to see how things will develop.' Still, he added that Israel would 'continue talking to China as [part of] an ongoing process.'
Failure to help bring peace to the Middle East could seriously dampen China's recent efforts to portray itself as an effective global peacebroker, especially after Ukraine already rejected a peace plan Beijing had proposed in 2023. And if Iran's regime falls, Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor of political science at the Arctic University of Norway, told France 24, the China-mediated truce with Saudi Arabia would also risk 'going up in smoke.'
'It is hard to predict how the conflict itself might impact [China's diplomatic] efforts,' Figueroa says. 'A wider conflict would undoubtedly complicate Chinese diplomatic efforts, which largely rest on their ability to provide economic development.'
Economic concerns
While the Iran-China trade balance is largely skewed in China's favor— around a third of Iranian trade is with China, but less than 1% of Chinese trade is with Iran —China is heavily dependent on the Middle East's oil.
'China is by far the largest importer of Iranian oil,' according to a statement in March by the U.S. State Department, which added: 'The Iranian regime uses the revenue it generates from these sales to finance attacks on U.S. allies, support terrorism around the world, and pursue other destabilizing actions.'
Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of public education and advocacy coalition Win Without War, tells TIME that China 'has a vested interest in seeing the conflict end before Israel strikes more of Iran's oil infrastructure.'
But China is less dependent on Iran itself than on access to the region's reserves. 'The Islamic Republic is a replaceable energy partner,' according to a Bloomberg analysis.
For global oil markets too, changes to Iran's supply alone are unlikely to cause significant price disruptions. 'Even in the unlikely event that all Iranian exports are lost, they could be replaced by spare capacity from OPEC+ producers,' assessed credit agency Fitch Ratings earlier this week.
Around 20% of the world's oil trade, however, passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to close in retaliation if the U.S. joins the war.
'If the United States officially and operationally enters the war in support of the Zionists, it is the legitimate right of Iran in view of pressuring the U.S. and Western countries to disrupt their oil trade's ease of transit,' said Iranian lawmaker Ali Yazdikhah on Thursday, according to state-sponsored Iranian news agency Mehr News.
Doing so would also impact China, for which more than 40% of crude oil imports come from the Middle East.
The conflict's 'greatest impact on China could be on energy imports and supply chain security,' Sun Degang, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University, told the South China Morning Post.
'While Beijing will continue to condemn the conflict, it will also seek to balance ties with Israel and the Gulf states and promote stable energy flows,' according to Bloomberg's analysts, especially as surging commodity prices would exacerbate domestic economic growth challenges already hampered by the trade war with the U.S. and an ongoing real estate crisis.
In response to a question about the potential interruption of Iranian oil supplies to China, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun reiterated on Tuesday the need to 'ease tensions as soon as possible' in order to 'prevent the region from spiraling into greater turmoil.'
A contained conflict could be good for China
'If a wider conflict breaks out,' Figueroa says, 'the impact on China's economic projects and investments in the region would be significant.' Foreign policy analyst Wesley Alexander Hill noted in a Forbes op-ed that an escalated conflict could force China into a bind between taking 'decisive action' to defend Iran, which might alienate Saudi Arabia, or doing nothing militarily and letting Israeli and potentially U.S. attacks 'continue to degrade Iranian export capacity,' which would leave other regional partners with a 'dim view [of] what Chinese commitment under pressure looks like.'
Still, some analysts have suggested that China—as well as Russia—may be content for now to sit back and let things play out, with their higher priorities clearly elsewhere.
According to Bloomberg Economics analyst Alex Kokcharov, a contained conflict in the Middle East could 'distract Washington from strategic competition with China.'
Added Bloomberg's bureau chief in China, Allen Wan, in a newsletter Friday: 'Should the U.S. once again get tangled up in a war in the Middle East, that'd probably suit China just fine. Beijing and the [People's Liberation Army] would appreciate the chance to squeeze Taiwan tighter.'
'At very least, both powers [Russia and China] are content to watch the U.S. further squander goodwill with gulf Arab partners by backing another destabilizing conflict in the region,' Haghdoosti, the Win Without War executive director, tells TIME. And they, she adds, are likely 'shedding no tears that the U.S. military is currently burning through stocks of difficult-to-replenish missile defense interceptors to shield Israel.'