Before Saturday evening’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Chinese Communist Party had demanded that Israel end its attacks on the Islamic Republic and the United States to withhold itself from the conflict. The U.S. clearly didn’t heed their demands.
It’s not because President Xi Jinping is a humanitarian or has a particular interest in the Iranian nuclear program. China sees the unrest in Iran as a possible flashpoint that could spill over and cut into national energy security.
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Moreover, the fall of Iran would be a headache for China and its allies as it attempts to carve out international infrastructure outside the influence of the U.S. and other Western powers.
“They don’t like such a direct transgression of international law,” said Yun Sun, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution John L. Thornton China Center. “They also don’t like how this means that U.S. and U.S. allies will be even more dominant in the regions that are critical for China’s energy security.”
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Iran is among the most sanctioned nations in the world. It is in possession of vast oil reserves but finds itself with few willing buyers thanks to the “maximum pressure” campaigns spearheaded by the White House and other democratic governments.
The Chinese Communist Party is one of the only governments willing to skirt international restrictions and spend money on the Islamic Republic’s lucrative energy output, which the regime offers to them at a discount.
The two nations’ cooperation has only expanded since the BRICS intergovernmental bloc welcomed Iran as a member in 2024, alongside fellow inductees Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran exports approximately 1.6 million barrels of crude oil per day. About 90% of that product makes it way to China via a loose network of black market shipping lines and refineries that launder the fuel to help meet the communist nation’s demand.
China imports the majority of its oil from neighboring Russia, but the importance of Iran should not be overlooked. Iranian product currently makes up roughly 16% of China’s oil imports.
“China remains a financial and military lifeline to Tehran, allowing the regime to pay for its nuclear weapons program and expand its ballistic missile arsenal,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies stated in a report earlier this month, asserting that the arrangement “accounts for nearly 20 percent of Iran’s economy and is heavily controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
The loss of these oil imports alone is not a critical threat to Chinese energy security, but if the conflict produces cascading effects that compromise imports and exports throughout the region, it could grow from a headache to a serious concern.
Several Middle Eastern countries are among the top sources of imported oil for China, including its No. 2 supplier, Saudi Arabia. Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman are also in that category to a lesser extent.
Almost all oil exports from these countries travel through the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranian government has already floated taking control over.
“A top concern for China — that if conflict is going to expand, then the spill over effect is going to affect the energy transportation or the shipment of the oil and gas from the region,” Yun told the Washington Examiner.
She continued, “[Iran] could say, ‘Well, unless Israel stops striking our territory, we’re going to block all oil tankers through the strait. Let’s go nuclear, let’s go suicidal, let’s [make it so] nobody can ship oil.’ Maybe this is suicidal for Iran, but it’s also going to impose significant damage on everyone else.”
Belt and Road buy-in
Iran is also a prominent stage for the Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative, the government’s decades-spanning plan for growing Chinese transnational trade and influence through a Silk Road-esque infrastructure.
A highly anticipated hub in this arrangement is the China-Iran rail corridor project, which would create an efficient transit route for the People’s Republic into the Middle East and Central Asia, with hopes of expanding into Africa and even connecting further West.
The Iran–China 25-year Cooperation Program was signed in 2021 in order to establish a framework for cooperation on these and other common interests, but finalized arrangements have not been approved.
The agreement was discussed by high-level diplomats as recently as last week, just days before Israel’s bombings began. But progress on this front has been slow, most likely due to China’s increasing unease with Iranian foreign policy and doubts about its long-term stability.
“Although the Chinese would like to believe that the ‘Persian lion’ is still a force to be reckoned with in the region, the reality is that its decline has been obvious and also irreversible,” Yun told the Washington Examiner. “This inability for Iran to reverse or to counter [Israel], the Chinese essentially see as a destruction of the Axis of Resistance. … There is something seriously wrong with Iran’s national capability that is no longer the force that it used to be.”
The threat of regime change or widespread unrest complicates the many interconnected infrastructure projects of the Belt and Road in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Xi just wrapped up a summit in Kazakhstan that also brought in the leaders of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan for multilateral meetings on the future of Chinese investment.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Guo Jiakun emphasized China’s desire to keep the region peaceful during a Thursday press conference, where he said the situation is on the brink of “sliding into [an] abyss and triggering an even larger disaster.”
“The situation in the Middle East is tense and delicate and facing the risk of getting out of control,” he told reporters. “China opposes any move that violates the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter and a country’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity, and opposes using or threatening to use force in international relations.”
The Chinese Communist Party has already been forced to evacuate approximately 1,600 Chinese nationals from Iran. Several hundred additional Chinese citizens were evacuated from Israel.
“The parties to the conflict, especially Israel, should cease fire as soon as possible to prevent the situation from escalating in turn and resolutely avoid the spillover of war,” Xi said in his first remarks on the conflict, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
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“If the conflict escalates further, not only will the conflicting parties suffer greater losses, but regional countries will also suffer greatly,” Xi added.
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Xi phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin about the conflict earlier this month.
The two leaders “fundamentally believe that there is no military solution to the current situation and issues related to Iran’s nuclear program,” said Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. They stressed that peace “must be achieved exclusively through political and diplomatic means.”
Russia, a fellow heavyweight member of the BRICS bloc, might be enjoying the international spotlight shifting from its invasion of Ukraine to the Israeli attacks, but the threat of Iranian collapse is concerning for its long game.
Iran is a key supplier of the Russian military, shipping its armed forces everything from ballistic missiles to unmanned attack drones.
Ultimately, the end of the Islamic Republic would be a blow to the entire anti-Western ecosystem being built and compromise attempts to build spheres of influence and economic opportunity outside U.S.-led power structures.
For Xi and his party, the dust-up over Iran’s nuclear energy program is not only irrelevant to Chinese prosperity, but it threatens to undermine the geopolitical accomplishments it has been pursuing for decades.