China is not ready for a post-American world

MIDDLE EASTERN rulers are livid with President Donald Trump, who together with Israel unleashed a war on Iran without a serious plan for ending it. They are disappointed by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has failed to twist arms and bang heads in the cause of peace, though his country enjoys unique economic leverage over every party to the conflict.China is delighted, too, to see Mr Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions fail to topple Iran’s regime, even when backed by air strikes. (REUTERS PHOTO)On the face of it, fury with Mr Trump is more consequential than dismay at Mr Xi. A fear of abandonment by America is having real-world effects. Big countries such as Saudi Arabia are hedging and deepening security ties with other partners, from Turkey to Pakistan. Actually, as a guide to the global balance of power and its reshaping by the war, Mr Xi’s caution is just as revealing.There is a cynical explanation for China’s reluctance to take risks for peace. According to that world-weary take, its Communist Party leaders relish the spectacle of America floundering in a Middle Eastern quagmire. Why would they want to save their most dangerous rival?That is not wholly wrong. As long as American forces are trapped in the Gulf, using up hard-to-replace munitions, Pentagon chiefs will have fewer aircraft-carriers, warships and air-defence systems with which to bother China in its backyard.China is delighted, too, to see Mr Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions fail to topple Iran’s regime, even when backed by air strikes. For months, Chinese with high-level Iranian contacts have told Western interlocutors that Iran is an ancient and proud civilisation that will never bow to foreign bullying. Some draw a parallel with North Korea, another brutish regime that has withstood harsh sanctions for decades. Given how Chinese party bosses loathe both sanctions and regime change, they are relieved to see Iran continue to resist, for now.The first months of the Iran war saw China pull off another big win. The world realised it owed China a debt of gratitude for greatly reducing its oil imports after the Strait of Hormuz closed, stabilising global energy markets. Possibly it was China’s intention to keep oil prices low. The country’s economy is slowing at home, leaving its growth so dependent on exports that a collapse in overseas demand would hurt. Perhaps China was reaping the rewards of having built up vast oil reserves, allowing it to meet as much as half of its domestic demand by drawing on existing stocks. By reducing imports, China could uphold its policy of avoiding excessive reliance on any single supplier, even including close geopolitical partners such as Russia.Those reserves reduced the sting, too, of the Trump administration’s efforts to stop Iran selling oil to China, by far the largest buyer of its crude. That undercut claims by Trump apologists that his disastrous war with Iran was in fact the opening move of a grandmaster-level chess game to contain China. More painfully still for China hawks in Washington, Mr Trump shows no sign of wishing to challenge China’s ties to Iran’s war machine. The president is eager for a successful meeting with Mr Xi in Washington on September 24th. He recently played down reports that Chinese satellite images may have helped Iran attack American air bases in Jordan, testily telling journalists that America does similarly disobliging things to China.So far, so self-interested: China does have reasons to celebrate Mr Trump’s misadventure in the Gulf. Mr Xi took a victory lap at a summit of leaders from the BRICS countries, a group of emerging economies, held in Delhi on September 12th. “This war has inflicted severe losses on the peoples of the region and does not serve the common interests of the international community,” tut-tutted Mr Xi. He drew his fellow leaders’ attention to a series of “global initiatives” that China has rolled out in recent years, conveying its hopes for a new world order (in summary: economic development is good, meddling in countries’ internal affairs is bad, advocating Western democracy is very bad). He declared that “China is ready to work with fellow BRICS members to play its due role in achieving peace and tranquillity in the Middle East and the Gulf.”Alas, Mr Xi’s offer meant not very much, given that the BRICS grouping operates by consensus and its ten members, who include China, Iran and Russia, but also close American partners such as the United Arab Emirates, do not agree on how to bring peace to the Gulf. China’s global initiatives are filled with high-flown phrases, but have done nothing to end an actual war.This is bad for the region and for China. Even big reserves do not last forever. In recent weeks China has resumed buying oil, competing with Asian neighbours on global spot markets and helping to push up future-dated prices sharply.The conflict is curbing flows of investments, energy, green-tech and AI infrastructure between China and the Gulf.To beat America, China needs the West for a while yetBluntly, the war has come too soon for China. For now, China’s rise relies on a global trading order underwritten by American power. China’s navy is not about to keep trade routes open in the Middle East. Chinese diplomacy remains risk-averse and opportunistic, not world-shaping. When China uses its economic heft to coerce other countries, it is to defend narrow national interests, not to change governments’ broader foreign policies.The country’s leaders are confident that they can glimpse a future in which China is so wealthy and strong and dominates so many vital technologies that no one dares to defy it on any point. Once it enjoys such global impunity, it hopes that its interests-based, order-obsessed approach will be a model for lots of others. Mr Trump’s ineptitude may hasten that day. Until then, though, expect China to remain a cautious giant that talks of peace but does little to secure it.