In the United States, the democratic socialists and the Hamas sympathizers often march arm in arm. Abroad, news that China is exporting surface-to-air missiles to Iran reveals the extent of the alliance between Islamists and the Chinese Communist Party. The domestic red-green alliance threatens to immiserate a generation of Americans. The international variant could also do the same.
The extent to which Beijing coordinates with other anti-American capitals, such as Moscow and Tehran, has been the subject of considerable controversy for decades. Many point out there is very little ideological overlap between the mullahs, who believe the world should be governed by clerics, and aggressively atheistic Communists.
Others observe there are important strategic disagreements between them. China clearly intends to supplant Russia’s traditional dominance of Central Asia, which alarms the Kremlin, and Tehran casts a wary eye on encroachments into its neighborhood. All three are significant producers of oil and gas, but China’s massive manufacturing sector makes it the only net importer of the trio. Some hoped that China would moderate Putin’s ambitions against Ukraine for fear of upsetting one of its largest export markets in Europe and would forbid Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz and thus driving up the price of oil.
Those thoughts and hopes appear to be the stuff of dreams, not reality. Beijing’s statements about the Strait of Hormuz have not been enthusiastically supportive of the Iranian campaign. But the Chinese exports to Iran of ballistic missile technology before this year’s fighting and continued exports today show that Xi Jinping is backing Tehran’s moves much as he is supporting Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. There is little love lost between America’s enemies, but their hatred and fear of American power so far outweighs other considerations.
From one perspective, the Strait’s closure seems to highlight Xi’s wisdom. He is determined to attain economic self-reliance. His “Made in China 2025” initiative, the long-term campaign to monopolize the rare earths industry, and other policies aimed to leave China better prepared to handle disruptions to global energy markets and American pressure. Xi also aims to free China of dependence on other countries for cutting-edge science and technology.
Global energy markets have not gone as haywire as many expected, in part because China appears to have drastically reduced its oil purchases. Chinese oil imports in June were more than 40 percent lower than the year before. Beijing does not release data on its strategic petroleum reserve, which by some counts is more than three times the size of the American one, but it is unlikely that China could cut that much that fast without drawing down those reserves. A lively smuggling operation between Iran and China suggests that Beijing might be more successful at hiding evidence of its Middle East dependency than at actually removing it.
But Xi’s preparations for crises like this have not worked out as well as he had probably hoped. Chinese economic statistics, which are so unreliable that former top economic official Li Keqiang told an American diplomat that he created his own indices, supposedly show 5 percent growth at the beginning of this year. But there is a good chance that the U.S. economy grew at a faster pace than China’s for the first time since Mao Zedong’s death.
He is also far from reaching self-sufficiency. In a war with the United States, Washington would be able to restrict Chinese trade much more severely than is occurring today. The Navy would stop some tankers and freighters, but the Department of the Treasury would do even more by preventing Chinese importers and their ships from getting maritime insurance. Few captains and sailors would want to sail into a war zone, and almost no owners would risk their cargo to the fortunes of war.
Xi’s obsession with making imports redundant is slowing down the Chinese economy, as Chinese firms are duplicating the work of other, better competitors elsewhere. And by his own standards, he is failing where it counts the most. His campaign is also forcing Americans and their allies to respond by creating homemade versions of lower-skilled Chinese tech. This is necessary for national security, but there are significant outright and opportunity costs.
In different ways, the Chinese and Iranian regimes claim to have unlocked a secret path to paradise. So far, the fruits of their labor have been misery and death. And they are preparing for more.
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