00:00Well, as we mentioned at the top, not just European relations.
00:03Also, China, as Donald Trump, making that request of China and other countries
00:07to help in the fight to protect tankers and keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
00:12Oliver Ferry from our International Affairs desk is with me here on set now.
00:16I mean, Oliver, why would Trump make this request of China?
00:18I mean, China, not only an adversary, to some extent anyway, of the US,
00:22but also an ally of Iran.
00:23Well, if I may be permitted a mangled metaphor, any port in a storm,
00:27because Donald Trump will probably figure, why not?
00:30Well, the US president is not under any illusion as to China being an adversary.
00:35He also believes he has a special relationship with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
00:40Now, that might be wishful thinking,
00:41but Trump would presumably be motivated by several factors,
00:45one being China's self-interest, just as Dave was saying there
00:48about European countries being dependent upon oil deliveries from the Strait of Hormuz.
00:55The same goes for China.
00:58He may also be factoring in China's relationship with Iran,
01:01thinking perhaps fancifully again that Tehran would be reluctant to open fire on a Chinese warship.
01:08All in all, this is indicative of Trump's own transactional worldview,
01:11where anything can be bought and sold.
01:14And he may feel that he has something to offer Beijing,
01:17particularly in these continuing trade talks,
01:20that he might possibly offer to slash tariffs or so on.
01:24He would certainly expect Beijing to ask for something in return.
01:28Now, of course, it looks like his visit to Beijing at the end of the month will not now go
01:33ahead,
01:33though his trade secretary, Scott Besson,
01:36says that that's actually because of the war rather than any particular falling out with Beijing.
01:41What about from Beijing's side, then?
01:42Is there any likelihood Beijing might agree to help Trump?
01:46I would say close to zero for much the same reason as the U.S. and U.S.'s NATO allies
01:52won't or probably won't,
01:54because Beijing will view it as a Washington self-inflicted problem to deal with themselves.
01:59There's also the fact that China is on far friendlier terms with Iran than any of those countries,
02:05even if, as I will come to in a minute, relations between Tehran and Beijing aren't quite as tight as
02:10is popularly imagined.
02:12There's also the fact that in the past few weeks have shown that China is actually less exposed by the
02:18energy crisis
02:19than was initially supposed.
02:21It has strategic oil reserves it can dip into.
02:24And we can also see in this article that there's a sustained policy over 20 years.
02:31This is an article in the energy blog Latitude Media,
02:34which says that in 2024, clean energy met 84% of China's electricity needs.
02:41And of course, it is a world leader in electric vehicles as well.
02:45And this article says that it's a sustained policy of 20 years that has been managed by Beijing
02:51because unlike the whiplash policy of alternating governments in Washington,
02:56it has managed to actually build that up over those decades.
02:59So there's little reason to think that China, at least for now, would think there's any urgency to act.
03:05Oliver, you know the region well.
03:06You were our correspondent in Hong Kong just a few years ago.
03:10I mean, what sort of outcome do you think Beijing is hoping for from this war?
03:14One that is above all favourable to China.
03:16And that is not necessarily either side winning.
03:21It's more generally a restoration of stability,
03:24which is something that Chinese governments value above everything else,
03:28particularly in foreign relations.
03:30And China does not want this war, just as most countries in the world did not want it,
03:34regardless of whether they're democracies or otherwise.
03:38Could it live with the fall of the Iranian regime?
03:40It possibly might if it did not bring complete turmoil.
03:44This article published earlier in the war by Yun Sun, who's a Chinese-American analyst,
03:50she says that China won't help Iran because it cares more about the oil than it cares about the regime.
03:55Now, there has been some help forthcoming from Beijing,
03:58such as anti-stealth radar systems that help Iran detect enemy planes.
04:03China's particularly interested in giving these to Iran
04:06because it actually operates as a lifetime laboratory for their own possible later military uses.
04:13But there's no significant armaments or logistical support coming from China.
04:18There's also good reason for this.
04:20Iran is viewed as just too volatile and unstable,
04:23a partner in the Middle East for China to really depend upon.
04:27And China has actually drawn back from an awful lot of its trade in recent years.
04:32In 2021, it pledged $400 billion in future investments in Iran.
04:37But very little of that has materialized.
04:39And in fact, last year, bilateral trade between the two countries fell 25%.
04:44So while China is definitely keeping Iran on side,
04:47it's involved in an awful lot of the regional blocs that China is involved in
04:51that are very much opposed to the West.
04:55It's not really going all in on investments,
04:58given that there are a lot of other countries in the so-called Global South
05:01that are a lot less volatile and a lot less exposed to risk than Iran.
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