Israel’s attacks against Iran threaten to separate China from critical oil business partners, highlighting their need for greater energy independence and interrupting Beijing’s hopes of a more important role in the region.
For years, China has used its relationship with Iran to expand its influence in the Middle East, while it makes a cheap Iranian crude, and the Gulf provides more widely, a mother rock of the energy mixture for the world’s largest oil buyer in the world.
The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, said this week that all parties in the conflict between Israel and Iran should work “as soon as possible to avoid a greater climb of tensions.” China has said that the United States should not interfere with its “normal trade” with Iran and has opposed the sanctions led by the United States.
“Of course, China is worried [by the latest attacks]”Said Gedaliah Afterman, an expert in China and the Middle East at the Abba Eban Institute for diplomacy and foreign relations in Israel.
“If this situation continues to increase, then they lose a lot, both in terms of their energy security and Iran as a strategic card that China has.”
Since the sanctions led by the United States against Iran’s nuclear program realized at the end of 2018, Beijing and Tehran have strengthened the ties.
Beijing has become the most important economic life line of Tehran, buying the vast majority of Iranian oil shipments and supplying the electronic country, vehicles and machinery, and nuclear energy equipment.
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Last year, Iranian oil represented up to 15 percent of the crude oil sent to the second largest economy in the world. In general, China last year imported around 11.1 million barrels of oil per day, according to the United States Energy Information Administration.
Chinese purchases of Iranian crude surrounded most of 2023 and 2024, but began to relieve last year as the threat of new US sanctions increased, according to data from the KPLER and Bernstein load monitoring group data.
Iran exported 2.4 million raw barrels per day in September 2024, and China represents 1.6 million barrels. In April, Iranian shipments had fallen to 2.1 million barrels per day, of which China represented 740,000 barrels. Malaysia is also an important exporter to China, since the loads sent from Iran are reworking or transferred to avoid sanctions, analysts said.
Fitch Ratings analysts this week said that “even in the unlikely case that all Iranian exports are lost,” they could be replaced by the free capacity of OPEC producers more.
Other more severe energy interruptions could arise. The war, which is at risk of spilling in a broader regional conflict, has already caused Iran’s threats that it could block the hormuz narrow.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in oil and gas are sent through the river route to China from the close states of the Gulf each year, including Saudi Arabia, the largest oil supplier in China outside Russia.
China does not officially publish the volumes of its strategic oil reserves. But Michal Meidan, Chinese Chief of Research at the Oxford Energy Studies Institute, estimates that in all types of storage, there are about 90-100 days of coverage in case the flows to the country are restricted.
Beyond a growing dependence on Saudi oil, Global S&P analysts have pointed out that more than 25 percent of China’s liquefied natural gas imports last year came from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. While China has 15 LNG supply contracts with these two Gulf states, importers could be forced to buy in the spot market at higher prices, S&P analysts said.
For China, the Israel-Iran crisis war occurs in the midst of a tectonic change in the country’s energy combination. The country has been the largest oil user in the world for decades. According to XI, China is running to increase its energy independence, a transition that finally requires a massive increase in renewable energy and the electrification of the country’s transport and manufacturing base.
A boom in solar energy and wind has led to renewable energies the capacity of the electric power plant to 56 percent last year, compared to around a third ago a decade ago.
The “key conclusion” for the administration of XI of the crisis, according to Neil Beveridge, Chief of Research of Asia-Pacific in Bernstein, will be to double his impulse of self-sufficiency.
“If it wasn’t happening quick enough before, it will now happen faster,” he said.
The analysts said that China could benefit in the short term, since Washington’s attention focuses more on the Middle East, instead of tensions with Beijing.
However, in the long term, a webbilitated Irian threatens to undermine China’s diplomatic influence in the region and potentially interrupts his desire to portray himself, at least nationwide, as a credible mediator in global conflicts.
In 2021, Beijing signed a 25 -year -old cooperation program with Tehran. Iran also joined the Shanghai cooperation organization led by China in 2023, part of China’s efforts to position themselves as a responsible power and offer developing economies an alternative to global institutions led by the United States.
In 2023, Beijing promoted his role by mediating a Saudi-Iran agreement and published a 12-point peace proposal for the Russian-Ukraine war.
Despite these movements, Beijing is likely to remain out of the conflict in Iran-Israel, as was the case of the fall of last year of the Aliado Al-Assad ally regime in Syria, highlighting the limits of the influence of China’s foreign policy.
Jingdong Yuan, director of the Security Program of China and Asia at the International Peace Research Institute of Stockholm, said that although China rhetorically supports the countries “seen as receiving an unfair treatment or coercion of the West”, in reality Beijing’s approach to regional conflicts “was always cautious.”
Beijing will be concerned about the impact on other allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia. “The disappearance or collapse of the Iranian system or Iranian power, since we knew it is not good news for China,” said Yun Sun, a Chinese foreign policy expert with the Stimson Center, a group of experts from the United States. “That indirectly means that American influence has expanded.”
Additional Wenjie Ding reports in Beijing
