China calls Iran a friend. It imports more than $400 billion worth of Gulf energy annually. And yet, as the US-Israel war against Iran escalated, Beijing offered Tehran little more than a formal statement of concern. The reason, according to George Friedman, chairman of Geopolitical Futures, is that China has chosen commerce over comradeship.
Friedman walked through Beijing's calculus in a recent podcast, "Hvylya" reports.
The military option was never realistic. Iran is far away, coastal access routes are closed with the Strait of Hormuz shut, and China does not project force at that distance. But even if logistics were not an issue, Friedman argued, the answer would be the same. "If at this point China, for example, sent forces or weapons to the Iranians, it is quite possible that the United States would back off on it," he said, referring to the upcoming summit. "And the Chinese really need this agreement."
China needs two things simultaneously: the oil to manufacture goods, and a market to sell them in. The American market accounts for 25 percent of global demand, and China's entire export system was engineered to serve it. "It is not worth that much if you get all the oil you need at a low price and you can't sell it," Friedman said.
With bank failures mounting, unemployment rising, and the economy under sustained pressure, Beijing has decided that alienating Washington over Iran is a risk it simply cannot take. The trade-off is stark but rational: lose influence with Tehran now, or lose access to the world's largest consumer market for years to come.
Earlier, "Hvylya" examined the broader pattern of how Foreign Affairs traced the recurring logic behind Washington's undeclared military campaigns.