https://iclfi.org/spartacist/en/2026-china-iran
On February 28, U.S. imperialism and Israel launched a war of aggression against Iran, raining bombs on cities and military targets across the country. Under the banner of “regime change,” they seek to crush this “anti-American thorn” in the side of the Middle East, reduce Iran to a U.S. semicolony and seize control of its vast oil wealth. At the same time, they aim to use this assault to terrorize anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist forces throughout the region.
After the war began, many Chinese netizens spontaneously tried to donate money to Iran—to such an extent that the Iranian Embassy in China had to issue a separate notice on Weibo declining financial assistance. Public opinion in China clearly grasps what this war of aggression means for the country. Roughly half of China’s oil imports come from the Middle East. If Iran is crushed, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf’s oil supply—the lifeline of the entire region—will fall even more firmly under Washington’s control. American imperialism would then be able not only to tighten its grip on the Global South but also to lay the groundwork for encircling and ultimately strangling its number-one enemy: the socialist New China born of the 1949 Revolution.
Yet in stark contrast to this popular enthusiasm for aiding Iran, the Chinese leadership has done next to nothing in the face of the dire situations confronting Iran, Palestine, Venezuela and Cuba beyond sending humanitarian supplies and repeating pacifist platitudes about the need to “immediately halt military operations, prevent repeated escalation, and avoid the spillover and spread of the conflict” (Wang Yi, 8 March). The CPC’s conservative strategy of standing by with folded arms is dragging not only China but the entire Global South into ever greater danger.
The CPC leadership’s policy of appeasement flows directly from the Stalinist bureaucracy’s longstanding doctrine of “socialism in one country.” What it seeks is not to shatter the U.S. imperialist order but merely to secure for itself a stable and favorable place within it. Today’s CPC still clings to a Confucian nostalgia for the old U.S.-led order of liberal globalization. Even after the U.S. has trampled underfoot every supposed principle of “peaceful coexistence,” “international law” and “multilateralism”—even after Washington has shown again and again, from Palestine to Iran, from Venezuela to China’s own periphery, that it believes in nothing but naked force—the CPC bureaucrats still behave like pedantic Confucian scholars clutching tattered copies of the Rites of Zhou. They hope that restraint and deference can restore an order that America itself has already torn to pieces and carve out for them a secure place within it. They cannot grasp a basic truth: the old order was upheld by U.S. imperialism itself, and once Washington began to abandon it, it ceased to exist.
The CPC leadership claims that its present policy of toothless condemnation is necessary to preserve the “international order” and shield the Chinese economy from further risk. Others add that materially aiding Iran, or any country under U.S. attack, would invite sanctions. Let them take a sober look at the reality New China already faces. As the U.S. tightens its grip on the world, China is forced to keep trading within the dollar system, while vast profits wrung from the labor of the Chinese proletariat flow back to Wall Street. An internationalist anti-imperialist strategy does not mean recklessly triggering World War III. It means using China’s already proven weight in the world economy to aid and reinforce living anti-imperialist struggles. If U.S. generals knew that Chinese sanctions could prevent them from producing even a single F-35, would they still dare swagger so brazenly over Tehran?
The self-styled enlightened “strategists” of the Politburo seem to think that their present course has spared China the energy shocks battering Japan and Europe, while allowing the U.S. to burn through its own military stockpiles without China lifting a finger. In the short term, that is true enough. But the strategic result would be disastrous: U.S. imperialism would smash Iran, while its military-industrial machine—anchored on the American mainland—remained fundamentally intact.
What the CPC bureaucrats prefer instead is a fantasy: that China’s peaceful economic development can gradually wear down and eventually surpass U.S. imperialism all by itself. But what empire in history was ever defeated by commerce alone? In war, everything turns on who holds the initiative and who sets the tempo. Imperialism can lunge recklessly forward, indifferent to the devastation it inflicts on the world economy and on the masses, because its leading representatives act with ruthless clarity in defense of their own class interests. Bourgeois politicians and generals have enormous personal stakes in preserving U.S. hegemony. The CPC bureaucrats, in contrast, are trapped in contradiction. To defend New China, they must resist American imperialism. Yet their own material interests are tied to the U.S.-led order and the dollar system—through corrupt fortunes stashed abroad, entanglement with export-oriented sectors of the economy and so on. That is what prevents them from acting decisively in the interests of the Chinese workers state.
A month has now passed since Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the impact on China’s oil-dependent industries is already visible. If the strait remains closed for any length of time, the blow to the Chinese economy will only deepen; even the research, development and rollout of alternative energy will proceed under far worse conditions. Yet the CPC’s response has been to issue abstract calls for all sides, Iran included, to “end the Gulf conflict.” This is shameless pacifist drivel. Iran’s military actions did not arise from some unprovoked desire to “disturb the peace.” They are a counterblow against the American-Israeli war machine, struck only after U.S. and Israeli bombs had already rained down across the country. The war between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the U.S.-Israeli forces is not a contest between equals. If Iran declared a ceasefire now, it would amount to surrender to the United States, which would then use its control over Middle Eastern oil and the Strait of Hormuz to tighten its political and economic chokehold on China.
On the U.S.-Israeli side, the war over Iran is an imperialist war of plunder. On Iran’s side, it is an anti-imperialist war waged by an oppressed nation. The only correct position is therefore clear: demand the defeat of the U.S.-Israeli aggressors and the victory of Iran. This is doubly true for China. The bombs U.S. imperialism drops on Tehran today will tomorrow reappear as tighter blockades, harsher sanctions and intensified war preparations against China. For China as a workers state, the imperialist world order is a prison that must be smashed. What serves the interests of the Chinese working class is not the CPC bureaucracy’s empty talk, bowing for the sake of stability and returning to ritual propriety. It is taking a clear strategic stand against U.S.-Israeli aggression, standing with Iran, Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba and all peoples oppressed by imperialism, and advancing the anti-imperialist struggle.
China enjoys an overwhelming global advantage in rare-earth smelting and separation, with a near-monopoly in heavy rare earths in particular—a resource with which it could seize the West by the throat. Yet the CPC treats this powerful weapon as nothing more than a bargaining chip in tariff talks with Washington. This is a grotesque squandering of leverage. Use it now to choke off the U.S. and cripple its war machine!
Cuba stands on the brink of social catastrophe while China sits atop trillions of dollars in foreign-exchange reserves. A substantial share of those reserves should be used to aid Cuba, and Chinese engineers should be dispatched to help rebuild its infrastructure.
At last September’s National Day military parade, wave after wave of formidable weapons rolled past—the Dongfeng-5C, with its global strike range, among them. Yet they were displayed only to be hauled back into storage. If even part of that arsenal had been sent to Iran and Palestine, the anti-imperialist struggle in the Middle East would not be in the desperate condition it’s in today.
Most important of all, whether any of this changes does not depend on the bureaucrats suddenly coming to their senses. It depends entirely on whether the Chinese working class can emerge as an independent political force. If the CPC bureaucracy’s line of conservative appeasement continues unchecked, China will face mounting international isolation and a strengthening of capitalist forces at home. And when that day comes, it will not be the bureaucrats who pay first. It will be the Chinese working class and the oppressed who will bear the heaviest burdens. The Chinese working class must mobilize against the bureaucratic clique’s conservative appeasement line and set this country on the road of revolutionary internationalism. Only in this way can the gains of the 1949 Revolution—and New China itself—be truly defended.
