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When China declared on Monday that the U.S. blockade of Iranian oil leaving the Strait of Hormuz was “dangerous and irresponsible,” it was a brief window into President Trump’s latest challenge: how to keep the Iran conflict from upending an emerging détente with China.
Mr. Trump is expected to land in Beijing in four weeks, in what was imagined as a carefully planned, highly orchestrated effort to recast the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
The president has already delayed the trip once, and White House officials insist there is no discussion of putting it off again, even if the United States is still choking off Iranian oil exports. Ninety percent of those exports — more than 1.3 million barrels per day — were purchased by China before the American and Israeli attack began on Feb. 28.
At first, the Chinese were relatively quiet about the military action, knowing that the shipments already at sea and an impressive stockpile of emergency reserves of oil would likely tide them through. They ignored Mr. Trump’s demand that China send warships to keep the strait open. They produced standard-issue calls for both sides to stand down.
But once the blockade began on Monday, and facing the prospect that Chinese-flagged cargo ships, some manned by Chinese crews, could be turned away by the U.S. Navy, the tone shifted.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, made his first public comments on the war on Tuesday, saying that the world could not risk reverting “to the law of the jungle.” He never mentioned the United States or Mr. Trump. But he did not need to, adding during a meeting with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi that “to maintain the authority of international rule of law, we cannot use it when it suits us and abandon it when it doesn’t.”
It was a clear reference to Mr. Trump, who in January told The New York Times that “I don’t need international law,” adding, “I’m not looking to hurt people.” He made it clear that he would be the arbiter of when international legal constraints applied to his actions.
China’s foreign ministry, playing its accustomed role in signaling between Washington and Beijing, took a tougher line, accusing the United States of a “targeted blockade” that “will only aggravate confrontation, escalate tension, under the already fragile cease-fire, and further jeopardize safe passage thorough the Strait of Hormuz.”
For his part, Mr. Trump has largely refrained from uttering much criticism, even when it became clear last week that U.S. intelligence agencies had obtained information that China might have sent a shipment of shoulder-fired missiles to the Iranians, for use in the conflict. The intelligence was not definitive, and there is no evidence that Chinese missiles have been used against U.S. or Israeli forces.
“I doubt they would do that,” Mr. Trump said. He quickly added that “if we catch them doing that, they get a 50 percent tariff,” employing his go-to threat against any country defying his will. But he has dropped the subject, perhaps recognizing that any threat of new tariffs could derail his hopes of announcing a trade deal, the lowest-hanging fruit in U.S.-China diplomacy.
“President Trump has created the circumstance where two of his biggest goals are in direct conflict,” said Kurt Campbell, a former deputy secretary of state under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the chairman of the Asia Group, which he founded.
“One is to monitor and control all cargo coming through the strait, which includes China’s,” he said. “And the other is his desire for a manifestly positive visit to Beijing.”
Mr. Trump’s ambassador to China, David Perdue, was in the Oval Office late on Tuesday, discussing the upcoming visit. National security officials said that before the Iran conflict broke out, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had negotiated the outlines of economic initiatives the two countries would announce.
Far less progress has been made on the major security issues, according to U.S. officials, including how to talk about the future of Taiwan, or China’s fast-growing nuclear arsenal, or its military buildup in the South China Sea and the confrontations it has sparked with the Philippines.
With a month to go before Mr. Trump lands in Beijing, it is still unclear how the two leaders will structure a conversation about the blockade — if it is still in force — or about the display of U.S. military power that began with the seizure of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, then proceeded with Mr. Trump’s attack on Iran.
But there is considerable evidence the Chinese military is intently focused on how the United States pulled off both attacks. Chinese officials appear concerned about the speed at which the Iranian leadership was decapitated in the opening hours of the war.
“There is a lot of speculation about what can break the U.S.-China détente, and undermine the summit,” said Rush Doshi, an assistant professor at Georgetown University and former adviser to Mr. Biden on China. “It hasn’t been issues like A.I. chips, or even rare earths,” he added, referring to two areas of intense competition between the two nations. “But it could be Iran.”
President Trump meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in South Korea last October. They will meet again next month. Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
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James' World 2 
Apr 17, 2026 @ 03:57:02
The Chinese Communist Party government may be using our own Western corporate and oligarchic greed, as well as our domestically-destabilizing democratic freedoms, against us. The CCP knows that American and Canadian governance is heavily steered and may therefore be disadvantaged by domestic corporate/oligarchic interests, sometimes through the latter’s economic intimidation.
We exist in a system that enables such big-money lobbyists to pull our (typically politically vulnerable) governments by the nose. For example, high-level elected officials can become crippled by implicit/explicit corporate threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ aren’t met.
The lobbyists also write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them up. The practice may have become so systematic that those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it.
Meanwhile, the biggest of businesses (at least here in Canada) get unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting mass consolidation. Nations like China, on the other hand, are governed while essentially maintaining control over its own big-money and business sector thus market, which likely gives the government an overall foreign trade/relations edge over that of America and Canada.
… Does it not largely come down to complete political/governmental control?
For example, while watching the little amount of news feed allowed to leave China at the outset of the pandemic in late 2019, I was somewhat amused by TV images of some citizens being literally dragged — a few even invertedly by their legs — back into their residences to help contain viral transmission.
As the months passed and Covid-19 became a global pandemic, I couldn’t help but notice how China’s strict handling of its own outbreak, while allowing little rights and freedoms to its people (and maybe even internal/external big business), likely enabled a relatively short duration of its initial crisis.
Still, many Chinese citizens have tasted and enjoyed samples of freedom’s sweetness, either through trans-Pacific travel or Western images perhaps missed by China’s internet censors. Potentially problematic for China’s authoritarian government, those samples cannot be un-experienced.
My larger point: With greater democratic freedoms can come weaker national security, and vice versa. While I wouldn’t exchange my (Western) freedom for such national security, it is still foolish to pretend a national-security sacrifice isn’t being made in exchange.
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