China had been watching the Middle East war from a distance, benefiting from US involvement and the withdrawal of its military assets away from the Indo-Pacific theater. However, after the Trump administration imposed a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Beijing began to worry that a US-led blockade could cut off its vital supply lines and cause a shock to its economy.
China’s relatively non-reactive strategic stance and sporadic reports of covert assistance to Iran have allowed it to observe the evolution of US military tactics from a distance. Despite the theoretical military superiority of the US-Israeli duo, China has learned how Iran could still prevail in a war and how the drone swarms it launched could still reach their destinations and strike US military bases and energy infrastructure in the Gulf.
Standing on the sidelines of the unfolding war in the Middle East, China has learned the key gaps in US military strategy, many of which are likely to emerge in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a military conflict between the two. The US relied on expensive military systems, including aircraft carriers, long-range missiles, and bombers, while Iran waged a cheap war that relied mainly on drones and short-range missiles.
The war not only depleted US weapons stocks, but also forced Washington to move military assets, diverting resources away from the Indo-Pacific theater.
The key takeaways for China will be to bypass the decapitation strategies adopted by the US in that war and adapt to mass production of weapons, as large quantities of cheaply produced weapons can even outpace the qualitative aspects of warfare.
China has learned that to deter the US in the Indo-Pacific, it does not need to make any extraordinary military preparations. The US is causing its own decline through self-inflicted damage. This has become an irreversible trend as the second term of the Trump administration progresses. European countries and the Gulf states can hardly rely on American security commitments, as the dynamics of this war suggest.
On the other hand, China’s relatively non-reactionary strategic stance makes it a reliable partner for countries seeking to diversify their economies away from the US. While the war has caused a reduction in investment in joint ventures between the US and the Gulf states in the areas of Advanced Technologies and Artificial Intelligence, which need continued progress, China’s isolation from the Middle East conflicts has helped it make irreversible progress in this area.
In addition, the war in the Middle East has highlighted the importance of renewable energy sources, with the blockades imposed by Iran and then by the US on the Strait of Hormuz preventing the transport of oil and natural gas to the global market.
China has deep storage capacity for these natural resources for domestic consumption for at least 6 months. It will certainly become more worrisome if the war drags on.
Meanwhile, China is solidifying its role as a central power in the clean energy era. Its control over the supply chain of non-renewable resources is deep, anchored in critical minerals and rare earths that power everything from transmission lines to solar panels, batteries and modern grids. As global demand for copper, nickel, lithium and graphite accelerates, China’s dominance of the market is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The war in the Middle East has benefited China in many ways, but the US’s control of the Strait of Hormuz through its own blockade, in addition to that of Iran, has deeply worried it. Despite restrictions on free passage, Chinese merchant ships have been given the green light by Iran to proceed.
As the US has imposed its own blockade, doubts have arisen in Beijing about whether its ships can pass. In this light, China has called the US naval blockade of Iranian ports “irresponsible and dangerous.”
