Iran’s attack on Israel has undermined some of China’s diplomatic credibility in the region.
The highlights this week: China aims to balance its relationships in the Middle East while backing Iran in its conflict with Israel, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits Beijing, and China marks its annual National Security Education Day.
China’s Complicated Position in the Middle East
China is backing Iran in its latest conflict with Israel, but it seems to be trying to de-escalate the situation—while still needling the United States. Following Iran’s lead, initial Chinese reporting said Tehran’s weekend drone and missile attack had destroyed military targets. Such reports were deleted when it became clear that wasn’t true and that Iran was attempting to signal de-escalation. Instead, China’s line became that the attack was “symbolic.”
China has significant ties to Iran, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s call to Tehran immediately after the weekend attack—praising his Iranian counterparts—shows that Beijing has no desire to step back from the relationship. It is one pillar of China’s goals in the Middle East: essentially, to keep the oil flowing, claim moral high ground over the United States, build ties with autocratic elites, and avoid costly entanglements.
This strategy creates a paradox, as analyst Yun Sun recently wrote for Foreign Policy: China may prefer that the United States remain the security guarantor in the Middle East even as it frequently and publicly criticizes that role. The coalition that came together to blunt the Iranian strike showed how powerful those U.S.-built structures are, with Jordan and Saudi Arabia each playing their part in intercepting missiles and drones.
Those interceptions may have China’s military worried, given the critical role that missiles play in its plans for any future conflict over Taiwan. (Taipei has also watched the Iran-Israel conflict closely.) Nearly half of Iran’s missiles reportedly failed to launch or crashed en route. China’s ongoing military purges were spurred in part by issues with corruption and logistics in its rocket force, suggesting that it could face similar failures in a conflict.
The conflict has somewhat undermined the credibility China built with its successful diplomacy in brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year, which Wang described as driving a “wave of reconciliation.” At first, it seemed as if the Israel-Hamas war was helping to push the two rival states closer together, but the weekend strikes underscore how big the gulf between them remains.
Although China seeks to maintain relationships with nearly every party in the Middle East, it has done real damage to its ties to Israel. Behind closed doors, Chinese diplomats are trying to convince their Israeli counterparts that they don’t really mean what they’re saying about Israel’s culpability and that Beijing wants to maintain bilateral ties.
Israel has been keen to bind itself to China in recent years, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling their ties a “marriage made in heaven” and Israel a “perfect junior partner” for China. Israeli tech firms were once heavily oriented toward Chinese markets. Israel’s closeness to China has even previously sparked security concerns from the United States.
In the 2010s, when building its mechanisms of mass repression in Xinjiang, China recruited former Israeli security personnel to teach at the People’s Public Security University of China in Beijing. There, China also pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to identify supposed militants; now Israel is deploying it to direct bombs in Gaza. Meanwhile, China’s partners in the Middle East have had no problem with Beijing’s mass repression of Muslims in Xinjiang; in some cases, they have endorsed it.
However, China’s failure to condemn Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack means that Israel is likely to take a harder line on technology transfer and trade deals in the future. And China’s reliance on Iranian interlocuters to understand the region may pose a long-term problem. (When I was in Beijing in the 2010s, I was struck by how easily Chinese officials accepted the Iranian government’s version of events such as the 2009 Green Movement.)
Although China has many experienced academics with Middle East expertise, their ability to be heard has been diminished under Chinese President Xi Jinping, to the degree that some have taken jobs in universities in Arab Gulf states to escape censorship at home. Ultimately, Iranian fears about CIA infiltration and Western cultural influence line up with the Chinese Communist Party’s own concerns—and reinforce them.
What We’re Following
Scholz in China. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is currently on a state visit to Beijing, shoring up one of Germany’s most important business relationships. Germany has always been one of China’s most consistent advocates in the European Union, although that position has become tougher lately. Scholz is pro-engagement but under pressure from his coalition partners in the Green party to take a strong line against Chinese human rights abuses.
Scholz’s trip seems to have prompted a round of disclosures from U.S. intelligence officials about China’s material support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Scholz says he has asked China to pressure Russia to end the war, but there is no reason to think Chinese officials will listen. Beijing still walks a tough line, aiding its allies in Moscow while trying to not lock its firms out of U.S.-dominated international finance systems: Russian firms have had significant problems making payments to China this year.
Beijing marks National Security Education Day. On Monday, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) celebrated the annual National Security Education Day, when the agency puts out videos about foiled foreign plots. China’s top official on Hong Kong affairs used the occasion to emphasize national security in the city, where the phrase has long justified the destruction of judicial independence and freedom of speech.
This year, there was also a focus on Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the two Canadian citizens detained in China for three years in retaliation for Canada’s case against Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou and released in 2021. That is likely a response to Canada’s ongoing investigations into Chinese interference in its last two elections.
China’s already large security apparatus has only grown under Xi, from surveillance to border control. Although the teams hired to enforce COVID-19 lockdowns have been disbanded, Xi’s constant emphasis on national security means the MSS and others remain among the most powerful actors in Chinese politics.
Tech and Business
TikTok’s China ties in spotlight. In a report published this week, several former TikTok employees told Fortune that the app’s Chinese parent company required them to send significant amounts of data to China, even after an initiative that supposedly kept U.S. users’ data entirely in the United States. The data wasn’t sensitive or espionage-related—simply the kind of corporate information collected by firms daily.
It’s entirely possible that the data-sharing reflects incompetence rather than malice or deliberate intent, but it certainly is not going to help the company’s image in Washington, where attempts to craft a ban on TikTok continue. Realistically, there is no way for a company with a parent headquartered in China to avoid demands from the Chinese government without splitting off its U.S. business—something that Beijing opposes.
However, there is no clear evidence that the Chinese government has made that kind of direct ask yet.
Teens love industrial glycine? There are a lot of Chinese content farms sharing factory videos on TikTok, many of which are somewhat confused about whom they’re targeting. Normally, there is not much interest among U.S. teens in plastic crushers or injection molding machines. However, there is interest in high-grade industrial glycine, used in water treatment and pesticides.
Donghua Jinlong, an industrial chemicals company headquartered in Shijiazhuang, the chemical capital of China, has become a viral meme on TikTok and spread to other social media platforms. Some of its videos rack up hundreds of thousands of views; as tech journalist Louise Matsakis points out, the company itself is confused about why it is receiving so many demands for Donghua Jinlong merchandise.
The reason behind the trend appears to be nothing more than that “high-grade industrial glycine” is very fun to say. But perhaps it’s an example of the kind of low-stakes silliness that U.S.-China relations could use more of.
A Bit of Culture
The polymathic writer and official Su Shi engaged in discourse on topics from food and poetry to governance. Like many Chinese intellectuals, however, what he seems to have valued most was friendship—especially the delight of talking about nothing in particular with his friends at night, as the excerpt below captures.—Brendan O’Kane, translator
A Nighttime Visit to Chengtian Temple
Su Shi (1037-1101)
It was the 12th night of the 10th month of Yuanfeng year six (Dec. 12, 1083). I had undressed and was just about to fall asleep when the moonlight shone in through my window. Delighted, I dressed again and stepped outside—then, realizing I had no one to enjoy the scene with, I stopped by Chengtian Temple to get Zhang Huaimin. Huaimin hadn’t gone to sleep yet either, so he joined me for a stroll around the temple courtyard.
A translucent, watery radiance pooled at one end of the yard, and clumps of duckweed and floating hearts swayed and crisscrossed in it: shadows of bamboos and cypresses. The moon is out every night, of course, and bamboos and cypresses can be found anywhere one cares to look. The two of us and our idleness had been the only things missing.
