The Audacity of Restraint: Why China Won't Intervene

A question I get all the time, lately in the case of Gaza or Iran, is: why doesn't China intervene?

Or, if they don't directly get involved in the fighting, couldn't they at least stop trading with Israel, or maybe supply Iran with weapons to defend themselves?

Honestly, I don't have the exact answers myself and I'd be lying if I pretended I did.

And, as a rule of thumb, anyone who tells you that they have special insights into the strategic thinking of the top leadership in China is lying: these people don't leak, literally no-one except themselves know what they're thinking.

That's why if you see a Western media article quoting anonymous sources that claim to be privy to secret Chinese leadership thinking, you can extremely safely dismiss it as rubbish from the get go; it's pretty much impossible.

In fact I've spoken myself to some senior people at Xinhua, China's own official news agency that's been the communication arm of the Communist Party since even before the PRC was founded, and even they don't have any special insights into top leadership thinking. So not a chance in hell that a Western journalist does 😅

What I do know however, and what everyone could know if they did a bit of research, is China's history, and what China has revealed publicly on its thinking around these questions. Which is actually surprisingly transparent if you take the time to look into it.