What the Iran war means for China’s timeline to invade Taiwan | Iran: the Latest news

I'm Vaneesha Rainey and this is Iran The Latest. Now there's one country that looms large over the entire US-Iran war and yet its intentions remain largely inscrutable, China. From its quiet backing of Iran with satellite data to target US targets, to how it's helped stabilise the oil market despite the Strait of Hormuz being closed, Beijing's role in this conflict has been quietly crucial. Yet it's also been hard to understand. The statements put out by leader Xi Jinping call for dialogue and peace, but his actions say otherwise. So what exactly is China's attitude to the Iran war? What is Xi doing to support the Iranian regime? And how is the conflict affecting his calculation about when to try to take Taiwan? To discuss all of that and more, I'm joined by one of the world's leading experts on China under Xi. Steve Tsang is director of the SOAS China Institute and co-author, along with Olivia Cheung, of a new book, China's Global Strategy Under Xi Jinping. He also wrote The Political Thought of Xi Jinping. And he was born in Hong Kong, a territory that Xi has crushed, transforming it from a vibrant democratic hub into a shell of its former self. So this is someone who knows China's leader and the dangers of his worldview inside out. Steve, welcome to Around the Latest. Hello, Manisha. Delighted to be here with you. So Steve, I just want to start with quite a broad question. I want you to take us inside the head of Xi, someone you know better than most other people. I wonder what you think he made of the US-Israel-Iran war when it erupted. In many ways, it's the exact opposite of everything that you describe in your book about Xi's worldview. You know, the US acting as the world's policeman at great cost to itself, intervening in another country's affairs under the pretense of supporting human rights. So I wonder what you think was going through his mind when the US and Israel launched those attacks on February 28th. Was he rubbing his hands together with glee at the potential opportunity it presents for China, or do you think he saw it as a threat to a stable world order he's trying to build where China can thrive? At first, I think his reaction was somewhat mixed, because immediately he would have seen the economic implications of the US use of force against Iran and disruptions to the supply of oil and energies more generally and to the trading operations that needs to go through the Strait of Hormuz as well. And since China is the largest importer of energy and also exporter of goods, the war was not something that he had wanted. But having said that, he was also rather pleased by that, because he couldn't see how the United States under Trump would come out well out of that conflict. It really would not take him very much to see that Mr. Trump or President Trump was unwittingly doing him a favor, because if Xi Jinping wants to deliver the global strategy that he has laid down for China, he would require a clear demonstration of how the US-centric and US-led liberal international order is in utter chaos and unfit for purpose. So much so that the Chinese case to transform that liberal international order, broken and unfit for purpose, into a different variant that would be suitable to deliver what Xi Jinping calls the democratization of international relations, would be something that would be appealing to the rest of the world. So in that sense, the positive outweighs the negative. Interesting. Your book talks about Xi Jinping as a forward planner, to put it lightly, and he's come up with this policy of a China dream of national rejuvenation. It sounds like a very flowery language, I think, in English, but probably makes a bit more sense in Chinese, because I know there's a lot of these sorts of sayings. And it's supposed to be achieved by 2050. And you talk about two main pivots to get there. One is about adjusting the international institutions so that they become Sinocentric. And the other is about this large sort of coup de grâce to show the ascendancy of China. And that, in your book, is the taking of Taiwan. And I want to come on to Taiwan later, but I just want to start with this shifting of the world order and the international institutions. China does a lot at the UN, you point out, mainly through the General Assembly rather than the Security Council, although it does have a veto on the Security Council, because it always wants to promote the global South as being the majority of the world and as being unfairly oppressed by the West, led by America. And we've got a summit underway at the moment, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which taps into that. It's not the UN, but it's another sort of meeting of global South players led by China and Russia largely, but lots of other countries part of it, including Iran. And the summit's declaration today had pretty strong political language on Iran. It condemned the military strikes on Iranian territory, backed Iran's sovereignty, not surprising for China, offered condolences over the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and also opposed unilateral coercive measures that conflict with the UN Charter and international law. Nothing on Ukraine, of course, as Russia is the other big partner at that organization, so no surprises there. So lots of statements of support for Iran, but no formal progress on something that Iran was looking for, the Shanghai Development Bank, which would have helped to de-dollarise or provide a de-dollarised route for countries such as Iran that are under the cosh of American sanctions. Can you just talk us through China's strategy with these global forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? What is it trying to do, and what tangible support is it trying to offer countries like Iran through them? Well, if I may, I would start off by outlining what Xi Jinping's overall ambition for the global South is, and then bring it back into the SCO rather than start with the SCO and try to expand it the other way around. Now, in terms of China's ambition for the international order, what Xi Jinping tries to do is to forge a common destiny for humankind. And I use these terms carefully because this is what his original Chinese words need to be translated correctly. But forging a common destiny for humankind with a leader who has a vision and the ability to lead and organise is very much implied there. And that leader, of course, is China. And the process that Xi Jinping wants to deliver it is what he calls the democratisation of international relations. Because the liberal international order, from his perspective, is clearly an international order of, by, and for the West. And the West, or the democratic West, is by UN member state terms at the General Assembly or in global population terms, a very small minority. The overwhelming majority of UN member states and the world's populations are from the global South. Of which, Xi Jinping says, China will forever be a part, implying that China, and who else, should be the natural leader of the global South. So there's this very strong engagement of the global South in the UN with a language that makes leaders and even a lot of people in the global South much more comfortable compared to what is the language of even the pre-Trump liberal international order. But in the liberal international order of the Trump era, the Chinese narrative is much more attractive. And amongst the organizations that China uses to advance this cause is, at the center, is the UN. But there are also a number of global South regional organizations which are seen by China and used by China as important building blocks to build up that support for that expectation and momentum to transform the international order. The SCO is one of them. And so you have, at the SCO summit, where Xi Jinping was spending a lot of time talking about his four global initiatives, where a member of the SCO is Iran, where Xi Jinping lead the SCO to speak favorably in defense of the rights of Iran, one of the SCO members, to do what they will say is Iran's absolute rights. At a time when the president of the United States had threatened substantial or devastating secondary sanctions against anyone trading with Iran, of which the single biggest trader is China. Specifically with Iran, I feel like China and Iran have a slightly curious relationship that I haven't entirely made sense of, and it'd be great to get your thoughts on it. Just for example, at the SCO summit that we've had yesterday and today, and as you say, these are ongoing while America has been threatening huge economic programs. We've had more tit-for-tat strikes occurring over the last few days after America bombed some rocket launchers on the Iranian coast in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran responded by hitting Jordan and we've had more tit-for-tat strikes. And so it's a time which Iran is looking for public shows of support, and it got those shows of support. Iranian President Massoud Rajavi was there. He took pictures with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi. But Xi Jinping kept Pezhishkian, as far as we can tell, publicly, we don't know what happened behind closed doors, at a bit of a distance. It kept a very brief, low-profile audience at the SCO summit, according to reporting. Chinese state media gave extensive coverage to Xi's encounters with other visiting leaders, but made no mention of a meeting with Pezhishkian. What do you make of that? Well, there is a summit that Xi Jinping is going to attend later this month, and that is the summit with Donald Trump towards the end of the month. Now, for all that is being said that China's global strategy is pivoted to global south, Xi Jinping also knows that he needs to manage Trump. And there is no reason why he would want to needle Trump by demonstrating the kind of personal relationship with the Iranian president in a way that would go down quite badly with Mr. Trump. So I think that is the pragmatic side of Chinese diplomacy. But with the SCO statement actually being supportive, in fact, quite supportive of Iran, he is already sending that message clearly to his constituents without having to take a step that could trigger an unguided response from Donald Trump, which could potentially cause problems because Xi Jinping is not going to go to the United States if there's any indication that he is going to have to end up in a shouting match with Donald Trump. That's just not going to happen. It's a curious policy though, isn't it? Because as you say, sort of maintaining, but the official statements that we get from Xi or from Beijing are neutrality on the conflict. You know, they call for dialogue, call for peace. And then we have this SCO, but it's a statement put out by the whole summit. So it can't be sort of pinned too much on Xi specifically. Although, as you say, he would have had to sign off on all of it. So it's a message. And then in the background, we know that China does supply Iran, we believe, with weapons, you know, manpads has been reported, sort of shoulder rocket launchers. We know that they provide them with satellite imagery technology to help improve their targeting of US military sites. Potentially buying oil. I mean, what can you tell us about how China's been supporting Iran through this conflict? And what has it not been doing as well? Well, a declaration of neutrality is one thing. To acting entirely genuinely in a neutral way is a different matter. The Chinese have clearly said they are being neutral about that. But even in that statement of neutrality, it is not entirely, strictly speaking, neutral. Because the war was started by Donald Trump with not terribly clearly defined, but strongly implied image that this is going to get Iran to subjugate to American might and accept that it will have to follow American's will. And end of that war essentially would imply the United States under Trump not getting what it wants. And Iran, just by surviving, will effectively have won. So it's a neutrality that clearly favors the side that China is more friendly with. So the element of supply and support that China continues to engage with Iran is in line with the general thinking there. But again, China does not want to pay a price for picking on the United States, not at a time and circumstances of its choosing. If and when China is ready to take on the United States, Xi Jinping will give that order. Xi Jinping is not somebody who will simply want to react and respond to a situation created by somebody else that could potentially take the initiative out of his hands. He wants to keep the initiative in his own hands. He is tightening control across the board. When I say across the board, I meant across the board, with no exceptions on all policy matters in China. It is not somebody who will concede that. Taiwan is really the peak of this policy, right? The thing that Xi is aiming at, and you talk about it in length in your book. You detail lots of factors that will go into when Xi decides the time is right to take Taiwan. You know, you talk about maintaining regime security, Xi thought, and the risks involved if it fails. You know, America's ascendancy and creating enough deterrence to America getting involved. I wonder what you think about how your book stops before you get to the Iran war. I believe you finished it towards the end of last year. I wonder how you think the Iran war has affected Xi's calculations on Taiwan, if at all. You know, we've had lots of discussion of America using up key munitions and how long it will take to replenish those. It's depleted its Indo-Pacific force posture. You know, the only dedicated Pacific aircraft carrier has been diverted to the Middle East. Europe and America increasingly divided, which is something that you touch on in your book. How do you think this conflict might be playing into Xi's thinking on Taiwan? Now, I'm going to throw a throwaway remark. Don't take that over seriously. Xi Jinping might have been kicking himself a bit that the PLA is not ready to take Taiwan at this point. Because there is a good moment if there is ever one for China to take the initiative over Taiwan. With the Americans being tied down in the Middle East, with its ammunition stocks running low, with its aircraft carrier based in Tokyo being redeployed to the Middle East. With American key allies, whether you are talking about the Europeans or the Asian Pacific ones, including South Korea, being less than pleased by the way how the Americans have been managing their relationship and the global strategic redeployment of troops. And President Trump's very warm words for Mr. Kim of North Korea. But the reality is the PLA is not ready to take on the most difficult, ambitious and risky military operation in human history. And that's what we are talking about. There are only about 11 or 12 landing beaches in Taiwan. Each one of them, very small and very quickly meeting cliffs and high hills. So they are relatively easy to defend compared to the Normandy beaches that the airline forces spent two years to prepare before storming. So the Chinese will want to be very, very certain that they can win because if Xi Jinping order an invasion of Taiwan and that fails, unleashing all kinds of consequences, it could potentially result in the Communist Party leadership getting the daggers out and try to get rid of him. Now, he is not somebody who has demonstrated in his 13 years in power any recklessness. He took calculated risk, but he's not on one occasion act recklessly. For him to order an invasion of Taiwan before he is pretty much certain the Chinese forces will be able to do that if the Taiwanese were, from his perspective, stupid enough not to accept the inevitable tide of history and simply embrace reunification with China, which from the Taiwanese perspective means surrendering. And his calculations is that the Taiwanese probably are not going to be wise enough to do that and therefore he would have to use force, which implies China will have to either deter the United States from interfering and the Americans have some kind of a formal legal obligation under the US-Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 to help Taiwan defend itself against a forceful external attempt to change the status of Taiwan. And if China cannot deter the US, China will have to be able to inflict sufficient damages to US forces deployed to support Taiwan in order to force the Americans to back off. Either way, China will have been seen very visibly that it has gone eyeball to eyeball with Uncle Sam. And of course, it would also mean that China will have seized control of Taiwan, which is right in the middle of the strategically critical first island chain in the Pacific Ocean enabling China not only to defend the security of its eastern seaboard but also project power deep into the Pacific Ocean. That is fundamentally a game changer. Assuming that when that happens, China will have consolidated support within the global south for its wider global agenda at institutions like the UN, then you will also have strong international support for China competing to work its project over Taiwan and be embraced therefore as globally preeminent power in the world. That's when both pivots will have come together and China will have delivered the China dream of national rejuvenation, which in plain English is to make China great again. Yes, and I want to come on to that in just one second. I've just got one more Iran war question because I love that you explain this policy as the Chinese version of a make America great again. I wonder if you think Xi is taking another lesson in the sort of foibles of being over certain. Trump and Xi are obviously very, very fundamentally different people, but Trump, it seems clear now, was certain that the Iran war would go his way, that the Strait of Hormuz, despite all of the warnings and all of the studies and war games over the years, that he wouldn't have to deal with that because Iran would capitulate so quickly. And I wonder if you think Xi is looking at that and thinking, I've got to be more than certain before I do this. Oh, absolutely. It started, in fact, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Two key lessons the Chinese drew from the Russian attack on Ukraine was that the preparations need to be extremely well done. And B, the risk of miscalculations is very, very high. And you have to make sure that none of those happened. The American use of force against Iran simply reinforced what the Chinese were already seeing as a very important lesson that they must draw before they take on Taiwan. Because from their perspective, taking on Taiwan is not just about taking on a medium power. If Taiwan were completely isolated without American support, the Chinese can afford to take that risk. Their calculation is that when they take on Taiwan, they are taking on the United States, one way or the other. And therefore, being less than totally prepared times two would be reckless. Let's zero in on this Chan-Shia policy that you have mentioned a few times. Basically, as you said, China's version of make America great again. But it has a much deeper philosophy, doesn't it? Historical background and a lot more planning from Xi as to how to get China there than I think Trump's put in to make America great again. Although, good hats. I think we can agree. What is it? And how does it inform Xi's foreign policy? Well, it means that China needs to spend a substantial amount of efforts to build up its international network. It is also going to be engaging with the world in a ways to transform China from being a rule taker to become a rule maker. It also implies China needs to build up its comprehensive national power, not just the military power, important as it is and building up as they are doing, but also the kind of economic muscle that China has or China will need to have because China will have to be prepared that in the event of China using force against Taiwan, the, in quotation marks, misguided Democratic West might think that they could do a bigger version of their sanctions against Russia and cripple the Chinese economy. And they would want to make sure that it will be the other way around and therefore it would be a better option for the Democratic West to accept Chinese preeminence than to try to confront China and be battered by China. So yes, it means a lot of preparation and therefore the timeframe of 2049, 2050, which is nearly a quarter of a century ahead, is something that we have, I think, should take seriously. It's not just something that Xi Jinping plucked out of the air because 2049 would have been the centenary year of the People's Republic of China. That's where it started. 2015 was the timeframe that was slightly adjusted to make it into the mid-century point. But with the kind of ambition that is being articulated and the need to be able to prepare the capacity to ensure the certainty of success, the timeframe is something which I think becomes significant. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the timeframe because as you say, you peg it to 2049, 2050. There was a lot of talk about 2027 and we did a podcast series last year about China's military. We spoke to lots of experts where they were explaining 2027 is when he wants the PLA to be, they need to be in a state of readiness. A lot of confusion around that 2027 date. But I defer to your 2049, 2050 date because I think it makes a lot more sense. I just want to return to this Chansha concept because I think it's fascinating, this Sinocentric world order that Xi is trying to build. And I think the phrase means one family under heaven. Is that right? Another sort of wonderfully flowery phrase. And it existed for 1,500 years. And I think this speaks to what Xi is trying to do and what you elucidate so well in your book is revive the historical greatness of China to end this century of humiliation which looms large in the Chinese imagination. And he wants to create a world view where China is at the centre and then these sort of concentric circles of influence. And it is really a spheres of influence world view, right? Where I want to take you with this is that there's so much discussion about a looming war between the US and China. We had the National Security Strategy which has named China as a major American enemy. But China, according to your book, Xi doesn't see that as necessary, necessarily. He wants to create this sort of more spheres of influence world view. He doesn't want to become, he doesn't want China to become the new America, as you put it. He doesn't want dominance. He wants preeminence. Can you just explain that a bit more for us? Well, first of all, let me explain that the Tensha conceptualization is based on Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party's understanding of history. It is not necessarily good history. Right. And the starting point really there is that in 2013, when the year after, months after Xi Jinping became the supreme leader in China, he introduced a concept which is called historical nihilism. And historical nihilism means anybody providing any interpretation or for that matter, evidence to contradict the version of history as presented by the Communist Party and therefore the Chinese government will have committed the heinous crime of historical nihilism. It is absolutely prohibited. So there is in China today only one version of history and Xi Jinping's version of history it is. Now in this reconstruction of history, Tensha was supposed to have happened when China was the most powerful, richest, advanced, innovative, organized and capable nation in the world. They avoid the term empire because Xi Jinping said famously that the Chinese people do not have one single imperialist gene in his gene pool and therefore has never ever invaded anybody in his 5,000 years of history in British and Marx. Now in this conceptualization, the best of time in history was when China was so powerful that every other nations will look up to China in awe and in admiration and in being inspired so much so that they would all then embrace Pax Sinica. And China therefore is preeminent and the world is a better place. Pax Sinica, the Chinese version of Pax Americana, sort of, but not quite. Oh, it's a Chinese version of Pax Sinica because Pax Americana implies America playing the role of global policemen delivering a lot of international obligations since the end of the Second World War for which Xi Jinping has zero interest in delivering. That's why they don't want to replace the United States as the global hegemon. They simply want global preeminence and implying they don't have to deliver the obligatory side of American global hegemony. And that's why I avoid the American version of it being Pax Americana. That implies the obligation. Pax Sinica does not. Now the problem with that is that if you look at Chinese history, as we look at history worldwide, when China was that great, prominent, powerful political unit, it was an empire. And as an empire, it behaved like empires everywhere else. All across human history, whether you're talking about the Roman Empire to the British Empire, they were all the same. They used force to subjugate and dominate as and when required. So the Xi Jinping version of Tiansha is more mythical than real, even though there was a kind of a tributary system that had previously existed in the neighborhood of China where countries neighboring China pay a kind of tribute to China in return for trade and favor. And for those being further afield, having less to do with it. And they were simply seen as barbarians. Do you think it's possible for China to avoid some kind of war with America? Or does that feel almost inevitable at this point if it is really set on taking Taiwan and establishing preeminence in its sphere of influence, which America by default will take as it being pushed out of being the dominant superpower in the world? It seems that Xi is aware of the possibility. That's why I'm asking, in May when Xi and Trump met, Xi asked, can China and the United States transcend the so-called Thucydides trap and forge a new paradigm for major power relations? The Thucydides trap, for our listeners, refers to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, the result is often war. Is it possible to avoid that? If the democratic countries of the Western world collectively work together, and that includes the United States, both in contesting China's ambitions over the international order and in devising an effective way to deter Xi Jinping personally, then I think a war can be avoided. One of the most important findings of the book is that Xi Jinping is so obsessively focused on keeping himself in power, he will not do anything that would trigger forces that could lead to a challenge to his hold to power. And that is where that deterrence can work in a Taiwan scenario. If we can send a message clearly to Xi Jinping that please don't do it because if you did, our reactions will be A, B, C, D, E. And if all this were being done, it's going to unleash forces within the Communist Party leadership to question whether your leadership is worth the cost it is being imposed on China. And that could potentially deter him. And it has to be something that he could immediately understand. But can the Democratic West organize and coordinate and be able to have that unity of purpose and diplomacy to deliver that? That is the question. Under the Trump administration, it almost certainly cannot do that. There is no united front of the democracies at the moment. Can it be fought? Yes, I think it can be done. And likewise, we can contest the Xi Jinping rhetoric about the democratization of international relations and his agenda for the United Nations. We have not been paying attention to the UN and other international organizations to make it function properly for a very, very long time. About time that we do it now. Sif Zhang, director of the SOAS China Institute. Thanks very much for joining us on Around the Latest and your book with Olivia Chung, China's Global Strategy Under Xi Jinping, is out now. Thank you very much, Aminisha.