Henry Huiyao Wang on How China’s patient diplomacy can help secure peace in Iran
The founder of CCG writes China’s diplomacy, backed by leverage and guarantees of assistance, could provide a template for contemporary conflicts where a single side cannot carry the day
Henry Huiyao Wang, founder and President of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), wrote on Wednesday, April 22 in his opinion column in the South China Morning Post
The Iran crisis loomed large in discussions when Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met President Xi Jinping on separate visits to Beijing last week. Both meetings focused on the need for a comprehensive and sustainable security architecture for the Middle East.
This week, on a phone call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Xi reiterated China’s support for an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire and for any disputes to be resolved through diplomacy. China, a long-time peace advocate in global politics, has advanced a four-point proposal for maintaining peace.
The first round of high-level talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad ended without a breakthrough. It is clear neither side can impose its preferred outcome through sheer force.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz affects everyone, with delays in its reopening increasing the pain even for those living well outside the conflict zone. This includes China, which sources 49.4 per cent of its crude and refined oil from the Middle East.
Reopening and stabilising this corridor is therefore not only in China’s interest. It would help major Asian importers, reduce pressure on Europe’s energy markets and ease inflationary strain far beyond the region. On this point, de-escalation is not a favour to one side; it is a genuinely shared interest.
Beijing has not stayed on the sidelines during this conflict. Beyond Xi’s meetings with leaders from Spain and the United Arab Emirates, Foreign Minister Wang Yi had made 26 phone calls with counterparts from relevant countries. China’s special envoy on Middle East affairs Zhai Jun has made several stops around the Gulf and the wider region.
Pakistan – China’s “iron brother” and close partner – hosted the US-Iran talks, and on March 31, the Chinese and Pakistani foreign ministers jointly issued a five-point initiative calling for a continued ceasefire, dialogue, protection of civilians, protection of civilian and commercial maritime navigation and a greater role for the United Nations in restoring peace and stability.
Beijing is positioned to support the process not as a power seeking to dictate terms, but as a participant with working ties across several camps and a strong interest in regional stability. In addition to China hosting the China-Arab States Summit this year and its continuing multilateral engagement through the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, China and Pakistan have an all-weather strategic cooperative partnership rooted in friendship and mutual trust. With Iran, China has a strategic partnership and deep commercial ties.
However, China’s role should not be overstated. Beijing is not in a position to guarantee a final settlement in the military sense. What it can do is help create political conditions in which a settlement becomes easier to sustain: by supporting talks, by backing a broader multilateral framework, by mobilising reconstruction and trade-based incentives, and by giving all sides confidence that diplomacy will not simply collapse the moment pressure eases. That is a different model from the Western habit of equating influence with force projection.
There is precedent for taking that possibility seriously. China was the broker of the 2023 Saudi-Iran rapprochement, and today it remains a major economic partner for both Iran and the Gulf economies.
The wider lesson is that crises of this kind are increasingly exposing the limits of unilateral diplomacy. No single actor, including the US, can simply impose lasting order on a conflict of this complexity. Stabilisation now depends on coordination among major powers, regional actors and diplomatic intermediaries. If China’s diplomacy, working in parallel with Pakistan and alongside others, helps preserve a pathway back to talks, that will be another reminder that durable order now depends less on unilateral dominance than on negotiated, plural forms of coordination.
China’s assistance with the Iran crisis could provide a template for other contemporary conflicts where a single side cannot carry the day. In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the problem has long ceased to be how to convert battlefield momentum into victory. It is now how to convert stalemate into negotiation.
If the Islamabad process gains traction, even slowly, it will show that diplomacy backed by leverage, guarantees and reconstruction-minded statecraft still has room to operate in a fractured world.
In Iran, the logic of further negotiation is stronger than the logic of indefinite escalation. China has more reason than most to help ensure the process does not fail. In a crisis where force has proved costly and incomplete, the more important question is not who can dominate the battlefield but who can help hold together a path to settlement.
