China’s Chokepoint Problem: How the Iran Crisis Exposes a Structural Vulnerability in China’s Rise
The Iran crisis exposes a central dilemma of China’s rise: a global economic power whose energy lifelines remain vulnerable to maritime chokepoints largely shaped by U.S. power. In the twenty-first century, control of these strategic nodes may prove more decisive than territorial conquest.
The U.S. strike on Iran’s leadership has prompted speculation that the crisis might benefit Beijing. The argument is straightforward: if Washington becomes entangled in another Middle Eastern conflict, it will have fewer resources to devote to strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. From this perspective, instability in the Gulf could create a geopolitical opening for China.
Yet this interpretation misses a deeper reality. Rather than creating opportunities for Beijing, the Iran crisis exposes a structural vulnerability at the heart of China’s rise: its dependence on energy routes it does not control. The world’s second-largest economy relies heavily on energy flows that pass through maritime chokepoints largely shaped—and ultimately secured—by American power.
For Chinese strategists, the lesson is therefore not opportunity but risk. The crisis highlights how China’s economic expansion and global ambitions remain tied to strategic routes it does not control.
A Strategic Shock in Beijing
China’s immediate response was cautious. Officials condemned the killing of Iran’s leadership as a violation of sovereignty but avoided escalation. The restraint reflected more than diplomatic prudence—it revealed the limits of China’s strategic options.
Two factors help explain Beijing’s unease.
The first is the political symbolism of leadership-targeted military action. Calls for “regime change,” explicitly invoked in Washington’s justification for the strike, resonate deeply in Chinese political thinking. For decades, Chinese leaders have interpreted such rhetoric through the lens of regime security and fears of externally supported “color revolutions.” The precedent of a major power openly targeting another state’s leadership carries implications far beyond Iran.
The second is the demonstration of American military capability. The strike underscored the persistent gap between the United States and its strategic competitors in areas such as intelligence integration, precision targeting, and long-range strike capabilities. For China’s military planners, such operations serve as reminders of the technological and operational advantages that continue to underpin U.S. global power projection.
Recent conflicts have delivered similar lessons. Russia’s performance in Ukraine has exposed the limits of even a major military power when confronted with the technological, logistical, and operational complexities of modern warfare. Together, these episodes point to a sobering conclusion: high-intensity warfare in the twenty-first century is extraordinarily complex, and military superiority can no longer be assumed.
Energy Vulnerability
More fundamentally, the Iran crisis exposes a structural weakness in China’s grand strategy: its dependence on imported energy.
China imports more than 70 percent of the oil it consumes, much of it from the Middle East. The bulk of these supplies passes through a small number of maritime chokepoints, most notably the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. Chinese strategists have long recognized this reliance as a strategic liability. Former President Hu Jintao famously described it as the “Malacca dilemma.”
Despite years of efforts to diversify supply routes through pipelines, overland corridors, and alternative infrastructure, most alternatives remain limited in scale. As a result, the majority of China’s imported energy still flows through vulnerable sea lanes beyond Beijing’s direct control.
In geopolitical terms, this dependence creates leverage for states that control these routes. Scholars of international political economy describe such dynamics as “weaponized interdependence,” in which control over key nodes in global networks enables powerful states to exert strategic pressure. Energy chokepoints are one of the clearest manifestations of this dynamic.
Even a temporary disruption in the Persian Gulf could have profound consequences for global markets—and for China’s economy.
From this perspective, instability in the Middle East is not a distant regional crisis. It directly threatens China’s strategic lifelines.
The Limits of China’s Middle East Strategy
For more than two decades, China has pursued a cautious strategy in the Middle East: expanding its economic influence while avoiding military entanglement.
Beijing has cultivated ties with multiple regional actors, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf monarchies. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested heavily in infrastructure and energy partnerships across the region. Beijing has also sought to position itself as a mediator, most notably by facilitating the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Underlying this approach was a broader assumption: regional instability would disperse American attention and constrain Washington’s ability to concentrate power in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, Beijing has sought to promote a degree of regional stability conducive to trade and energy flows while benefiting from geopolitical tensions that absorb American attention.
This dual logic—commercial stability alongside strategic distraction—has quietly shaped China’s approach to the Middle East in recent years. In the near term, such dynamics could help divert U.S. strategic attention from the Indo-Pacific. Over the longer run, however, Beijing has also sought to expand its influence in ways that might gradually reshape the regional order.
The Iran crisis now challenges that assumption. The U.S. strike demonstrates that Washington retains the ability to project decisive force in the Middle East while sustaining its strategic posture in Asia. Rather than becoming trapped in regional conflict, the United States has shown a willingness to act swiftly and unilaterally when it believes core interests are at stake.
China’s restrained response illustrates the limits of its position. Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Beijing shows little appetite for direct confrontation with the United States beyond its immediate region.
To some observers, this restraint may appear opportunistic. Yet it reflects a deeper structural reality. China lacks both the military reach and the institutional leverage needed to shape events in distant theaters, particularly in the Middle East.
The Geopolitics of Chokepoints
The broader implication is that great-power competition may increasingly revolve around control of critical economic and geographic nodes—strategic chokepoints in the global system.
Energy scholar Michael Klare has long argued that competition over access to essential resources can become a central driver of geopolitical rivalry. Yet in an age of nuclear deterrence and deep economic interdependence, direct war between great powers remains unlikely.
Instead, the emerging contest may center on what might be called the geopolitics of chokepoints. Control over maritime passages, supply networks, financial systems, and technological infrastructure can provide decisive leverage without large-scale military confrontation.
Reports that Beijing has urged Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz illustrate an additional layer of vulnerability. Even if Iran were willing to guarantee safe passage, the reopening of shipping routes would not depend solely on political decisions in Tehran. Maritime transport in the Persian Gulf relies on a global insurance and reinsurance system dominated by firms based in London. A handful of insurers and reinsurance providers—whose coverage underpins most of the world’s commercial shipping—can effectively halt tanker traffic simply by withdrawing war-risk coverage.
In the modern global economy, chokepoints are not only geographic; they are also financial and institutional. In such cases, chokepoints are not closed by states but by risk calculations embedded in global financial networks.
For China, this reality creates a persistent strategic dilemma. China’s economic rise has dramatically increased its demand for imported resources. Yet the routes that sustain this growth remain largely outside Beijing’s control.
Rethinking China’s Grand Strategy
The Iran crisis therefore raises a broader question about China’s long-term strategy.
In recent years, Beijing has framed its rise as part of the broader “rise of the rest,” suggesting that emerging powers together represent an alternative to the Western-led international order. Yet partnerships built primarily on transactional interests - energy trade, infrastructure investment, or arms sales - do not necessarily translate into durable geopolitical coalitions.
For a country as deeply integrated into global trade as China, a world defined by aggressive competition over strategic chokepoints would be inherently dangerous.
A more sustainable path may lie in strengthening a rules-based multipolar order; one in which multiple centers of power coexist within a framework of international norms and institutions. Such an order would not eliminate rivalry among major powers, but it could prevent competition from sliding into destructive confrontation.
The alternative is a world increasingly shaped by coercive competition over critical routes and resources.
In such a world, the geopolitics of energy chokepoints may become one of the defining dynamics of twenty-first-century great-power competition.
For China, the vulnerabilities exposed by the Iran crisis point to a deeper strategic reality: great-power competition in the twenty-first century may be decided less by territory than by control of the world’s critical chokepoints.
Jianyong Yue is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. He previously taught Chinese politics and development at King’s College London and the LSE. He is the author of China’s Rise in the Age of Globalization: Myth or Reality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and Crony Comprador Capitalism: The Institutional Origins of China’s Rise and Decline (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
Photo by Zifeng Xiong
