China has the means to score easy propaganda points against Washington right now. Bombs are falling on Iran, and Beijing could be railing against American imperialism. Instead, it has offered little more than a formal condemnation - and that restraint, according to George Friedman, chairman of Geopolitical Futures, is entirely deliberate.
Friedman laid out the logic behind Beijing's calculations in a podcast for Geopolitical Futures, "Hvylya" reports.
"There is something fundamentally more important to the Chinese," Friedman said. "That is an accommodation with the United States on economic matters, giving them access to the American economy and to some extent to American investment."
The issue, Friedman explained, comes down to basic arithmetic. China's economy is in serious trouble - bank failures, rising unemployment, social unrest. Beijing built its industrial machine to sell into the American market, which accounts for 25 percent of the world's economy. Without that access, the goods China produces with imported oil have nowhere to go.
Cheap oil means nothing if you have no one to sell the finished goods to, Friedman argued. So Beijing has made its choice: stay quiet on Iran, keep the diplomatic channel to Washington open, and protect the far more consequential economic relationship.
The Trump-Xi summit, originally scheduled for late March, has been pushed to April because of the war. But Friedman noted that even after hostilities began, the US Secretary of the Treasury and the Chinese Vice Premier continued meeting in Paris to sort out final details. China did not hesitate to accommodate the delay.
"Hvylya" also reported on how Foreign Affairs analyzed Beijing's approach to Iran, concluding that oil flows matter to China far more than the Iranian regime itself.