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China is currently preparing for a planned U.S. presidential visit to Beijing at the end of this month. It's also trying to make sense of the U.S. and Israeli joint attacks on Iran. Those have prompted alarm and intense discussion among China's foreign policy elite. But as NPR's Emily Feng reports, China is treading carefully.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Days after joint U.S. and Israeli strikes began hitting Iran, Beijing announced it had evacuated about 3,000 of its citizens...
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FENG: ...Ferrying some of them, as shown in this state media video, across Iran's land border into Azerbaijan. The evacuation operation reflected the close ties between China and Iran, especially around oil. Before this conflict, China's small, so-called teapot refineries snapped up as much as 90% of Iran's oil. Here's Muyu Xu, a senior analyst at commodities information firm Kpler.
MUYU XU: Chinese teapots primarily process Iranian and Russian crude because of their steep discounts.
FENG: Discounts because American sanctions prevent most other countries from buying Iranian oil. Xu estimates enough Iranian oil left the region before the U.S. and Israeli strikes and is now headed to China, and that gives Chinese refineries up to five months of buffer time. But the energy crunch from the entire Middle Eastern turmoil is serious enough that she says...
XU: Some Chinese refiners have already announced or are considering cuts to operating rates amid the growing concerns over the potential supply disruptions.
FENG: These concerns have prompted China to send a special envoy to the Middle East. Beijing's foreign minister has also sharply rebuked the Israeli and U.S. attacks.
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MAO NING: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: And Mao Ning, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said this past Friday that China, quote, "supports Iran safeguarding its sovereignty and security." Now, historically, Beijing has taken a strictly noninterventionist approach to foreign policy, and it has stayed out of the Middle East conflict this time as well. But Wu Xinbo, an international relations professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, says Beijing is reassessing the U.S.
WU XINBO: The United States is becoming like a kind of rogue state.
FENG: With the U.S. attacks on Venezuela and Iran, Wu says the Chinese foreign policy establishment largely thinks of the Trump administration as...
WU: Not just so selfish, but just irresponsible, irrational and destructive.
FENG: This assessment, he says, has forced international relations specialists in China to start to rethink the limits of diplomacy with the U.S.
WU: I think China is also prepared for some worst-case scenario between China and U.S. on the military side.
FENG: On the military side, he says, reflecting a hardening in stances among some influential Chinese thinkers, including this man, Zheng Yongnian...
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ZHENG YONGNIAN: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: ...A political science professor and commentator in Shenzhen who occasionally advises China's top leadership and who wrote earlier this month that the U.S. and Israeli killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei amounted to an American, quote, "religious crusade" against which China's usual passiveness may not be adequate.
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CHEN WENLING: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Or this scholar, Chen Wenling, the chief economist of a prominent Chinese state think tank who wrote this year that China should seize on the, quote, "landmark fracturing" of the U.S. and its alliances to form pressure on those that try to constrain China. Jacob Mardell is a writer and analyst for the blog Sinification who's been tracking Chinese writing on American foreign policy. He says, overall...
JACOB MARDELL: There's a sense of just needing to adjust to the new reality, this being a sort of law of the jungle, fear-based international order that China just needs to step up and respond.
FENG: And there is a feeling, he says, that China's normal tactic, sitting on the fence, may not insulate them from the U.S. or geopolitical turmoil anymore. Emily Feng, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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