China Power | Diplomacy | East Asia

The China–Iran Partnership and the Limits of Beijing’s Non-Interference Alliance Model

A preference for strategic flexibility has left Beijing dependent on a narrow set of “allies” whose usefulness is limited – especially in times of crisis.

The continuing U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran have raised an important question in East Asia: Why has China not acted more decisively to support Tehran?

Some analysts argue that Beijing does not view Iran as a genuine strategic partner and that the relationship is largely transactional. This interpretation, however, overlooks the depth of China–Iran cooperation. Beijing has supported Iran’s entry into BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization amid rising U.S. economic sanctions, mediated the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023, and repeatedly emphasized Iran’s role in regional diplomacy and energy security.

The Chinese government’s cautious response reflects a deeper structural constraint in Beijing’s alliance model. China’s partnerships are built on a doctrine of non-interference in the domestic affairs of partner states. While this principle reassures authoritarian regimes by protecting them from U.S.-style regime-change politics, it also limits Beijing’s ability to shape its partners’ strategic decision-making. As a result, the effectiveness of Chinese security partnerships often depends less on China itself than on the strategic capacity and pragmatism of the partner state.

Amid the intensifying war in Iran, and following the U.S. kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Chinese leaders may be reassessing whether this hands-off approach is sufficient both to safeguard their partners and to effectively challenge the United States.

To assess whether this scenario is plausible, we must first understand how China’s alliance model works and where its limitations lie. Only then can we consider how it might evolve in the future.

The Role of Strategic Pragmatism in the China Alliance Model

Since World War II, alliance formation has often required domestic institutional alignment among members — shared political systems, compatible governing structures, and aligned state ideologies. The Soviet-led communist bloc, the Anglo-American Atlantic Charter, and later NATO all required domestic political and institutional alignment among members. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mao’s China used similar methods, funding communist movements and insurgency in Indonesia, Malaysia, and many other places.

Post-Mao China, however, has embraced a different strategy: building a world that is safe for authoritarian regimes and insulated from U.S.-style regime-change politics. This approach reassures China’s partners by emphasizing sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs. It is precisely this policy that has drawn countries such as Venezuela, Iran, and other autocrats closer to China, offering them protection against U.S. regime-change agendas.

Because of its non-interference doctrine, Beijing does not shape its partners’ internal strategic capacity; it must accept this as a given. As a result, the effectiveness of China’s alliance model ultimately depends on the preexisting strength and pragmatism of its partners.

In Iran’s case, the regime has fallen into long-term strategic stagnation through its heavy reliance on Shia-based militias across the Middle East; what began as a tactical instrument has hardened into a structural constraint shaping both Iran’s foreign and domestic policy.

China is not opposed to Iran’s use of proxies or militias per se; rather, Beijing is concerned about the extent to which Iran has become locked into this strategy. The growing militarization of domestic and foreign policymaking – driven by the influence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force – limited Iran’s strategic options. This dynamic has drained Iran’s economic and political resources and made proxy networks its dominant –  though not exclusive – instrument of foreign policy. While the Axis of Resistance achieved limited strategic gains, Israel’s systematic dismantling of Hezbollah and Hamas has exposed the fragility of this approach. The attrition of its proxy infrastructure now leaves it with fewer tools and diminishing leverage to pursue its regional agenda.

Pragmatism here is the capacity of a state to translate ideological narratives into workable governance and strategic interests by prioritizing functionality, adaptability, and institutional effectiveness over rigid doctrine or symbolic resistance. In practice, this allows countries such as Iran, China, and other U.S. adversaries to maintain deterrence and challenge U.S. dominance while still engaging in routine diplomacy and economic relations with the United States or its allies. This logic echoes the classical Chinese stratagem of “hiding a knife behind a smile.”

A comparison with Pakistan helps clarify this emphasis on pragmatism, where Beijing has maintained a more productive partnership. Although Islamabad is not part of the CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea), it a long-standing partner of China, it maintains anti-liberal values, indirectly opposes U.S. dominance, and sustains ties with militant networks while engaging effectively in formal diplomacy – such as its recent military pact with Saudi Arabia – and, crucially, preserving a relatively functioning economy. From Beijing’s perspective, the Pakistan model highlights what Iran currently lacks: a sense of strategic pragmatism.

Even before China embraced pragmatism under Deng Xiaoping, Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan helped mediate the historic 1971 meeting between Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai, helping lay the foundation for the normalization of Sino-U.S. relations.

In the India–Pakistan crisis of May 2025, Chinese military equipment – particularly the J-10C fighter jet – was deployed in a peer-level confrontation for the first time. Despite conflicting reports from the battlefield, it is reasonable to say that Pakistan emerged from the conflict with confidence.

China’s military assistance has produced uneven results across its partners. Cooperation with Pakistan has substantially enhanced Islamabad’s military modernization and deterrence capacity, whereas Chinese support to Iran and Venezuela has not produced comparable positive results. In Iran, the HQ-9 Chinese air defense performed poorly during the 12 days of fighting last year, and also failed to protect the Ayatollah from assassination by an Israeli strike; in Venezuela, the JY-27A mobile radars failed to provide early warning during Maduro’s kidnapping. In both cases, the shortcomings likely reflected either system underperformance or the limited capacity of local officers to operate and integrate the equipment effectively. This variation suggests that under Beijing’s “no-interference” partnership model, Chinese military assistance is only as effective as a partner’s existing military institutions allow it to be.

Pakistan entered the partnership with an existing military establishment, a functioning diplomatic apparatus, and a political system capable, however imperfectly, of sustaining alignment with Beijing’s interests.

Allies Are Built, Not Found

The problem for Beijing is that this model only works when partners already possess a basic level of domestic stability and strategic pragmatism. If China’s pool of potential partners is limited to states that are already functional and aligned, its ability to expand and sustain a broader coalition under conditions of intensifying great-power competition becomes constrained. Iran illustrates this dilemma. Unlike Pakistan, Iran’s ideological rigidity constrains its strategic flexibility, making it difficult to separate state interests from revolutionary commitments. U.S.-led sanctions further reduce its value as a partner. China is left with a state that shares its adversary but cannot act as an effective or reliable instrument of coalition-building.

By contrast, the United States historically built durable partnerships by actively shaping the domestic foundations of its allies. In postwar Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe, U.S. support was accompanied by conditions, institutional reforms, and sustained political influence that went far beyond non-interference.

Marshall Plan assistance, for example, was explicitly tied to economic liberalization and limits on the political influence of communist parties in countries such as Italy and France. This helped produce allies that were not only aligned against communism but also shared a common economic agenda and form of political statecraft.

Contemporary China has pursued the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) differently: following its non-interference policies, the BRI often does not come with explicit political or economic reform conditions. The main beneficiaries are not necessarily China’s strategic partners, nor do recipient countries necessarily become strategic partners as a result. In many cases, BRI projects contributed to underperforming projects, unsustainable loans, and indirect debt traps. While China has at times used BRI-related leverage coercively toward smaller states, BRI projects overall do not systematically translate into strategic alliance-building.

This pattern reveals a broader structural limitation in China’s alliance-building strategy: without mechanisms to shape partner capacity rather than merely accommodate it, Beijing risks remaining dependent on a narrow set of allies whose usefulness is contingent.

These contrasting approaches to partnership-building help explain why U.S. alliances have proven more resilient over time, even amid shifting domestic politics and changes to the global order. Washington continues to benefit from committed partners: Japan, South Korea, and Australia’s commitment to Pacific security and Europe’s collective defense of Ukraine are all products of post–World War II alliance-building. Yet U.S. alliances have also imposed strategic costs. Israel, in particular, illustrates how a committed partner can become a source of reputational damage and regional entanglement, constraining Washington’s diplomatic flexibility.

China’s transactional model, by contrast, avoids these obligations – offering partners economic benefits without demanding institutional alignment or mutual defense commitments. This flexibility has real appeal, particularly, though not exclusively, to authoritarian governments. Yet flexibility has its limits. Without the institutional depth and mutual commitment that underpin U.S. alliances, China’s partnerships remain transactional, and the CRINK grouping, despite its shared anti-U.S. alignment, has yet to cohere into a reliable strategic bloc.

What’s next for Beijing’s Model?

If Xi Jinping intends to take Taiwan by force in the near future, China will face major obstacles under the current alliance landscape. For sure, Beijing’s partners will provide some level of support, but domestic constraints and limited technical capabilities will significantly restrict what they can offer.

This makes it even more important for Beijing to cultivate partners with potential preexisting capacity, such as Iran. Tehran retains a functioning state apparatus, a loyal military, and a deep-rooted anti-Western and revolutionary heritage, similar in origin to China’s own. Yet it has pursued a misguided strategic path that has trapped the country in a cycle of stagnation.

From this perspective, Beijing has two options: it can cautiously wait to see whether Iran eventually adopts a Deng Xiaoping–style path of reform and opening or remains trapped in perpetual revolutionary rigidity. Alternatively, China could use Iran’s post-war vulnerability to experiment with strategic influence over Tehran, guiding it toward a “Pakistan-style” model: one that is strategically pragmatic, diplomatically flexible, and closely aligned with Beijing

The latter option would require Beijing to go beyond building roads, ports, or supplying arms. China would need experienced diplomats, senior political figures, and strategic advisers capable of shaping partners’ behavior and institutions while preserving non-interference in ideological and leadership matters.

China and its allies are learning institutions, and we should not underestimate their capacity for strategic adaptation.

How China might implement such influence remains to be seen and will require the development of its own institutional capacities. Nonetheless, Chinese leaders should recognize the risk: either Beijing helps shape its partners’ domestic trajectories, or the United States will.

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The continuing U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran have raised an important question in East Asia: Why has China not acted more decisively to support Tehran?

Some analysts argue that Beijing does not view Iran as a genuine strategic partner and that the relationship is largely transactional. This interpretation, however, overlooks the depth of China–Iran cooperation. Beijing has supported Iran’s entry into BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization amid rising U.S. economic sanctions, mediated the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023, and repeatedly emphasized Iran’s role in regional diplomacy and energy security.

The Chinese government’s cautious response reflects a deeper structural constraint in Beijing’s alliance model. China’s partnerships are built on a doctrine of non-interference in the domestic affairs of partner states. While this principle reassures authoritarian regimes by protecting them from U.S.-style regime-change politics, it also limits Beijing’s ability to shape its partners’ strategic decision-making. As a result, the effectiveness of Chinese security partnerships often depends less on China itself than on the strategic capacity and pragmatism of the partner state.

Amid the intensifying war in Iran, and following the U.S. kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Chinese leaders may be reassessing whether this hands-off approach is sufficient both to safeguard their partners and to effectively challenge the United States.

To assess whether this scenario is plausible, we must first understand how China’s alliance model works and where its limitations lie. Only then can we consider how it might evolve in the future.

The Role of Strategic Pragmatism in the China Alliance Model

Since World War II, alliance formation has often required domestic institutional alignment among members — shared political systems, compatible governing structures, and aligned state ideologies. The Soviet-led communist bloc, the Anglo-American Atlantic Charter, and later NATO all required domestic political and institutional alignment among members. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mao’s China used similar methods, funding communist movements and insurgency in Indonesia, Malaysia, and many other places.

Post-Mao China, however, has embraced a different strategy: building a world that is safe for authoritarian regimes and insulated from U.S.-style regime-change politics. This approach reassures China’s partners by emphasizing sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs. It is precisely this policy that has drawn countries such as Venezuela, Iran, and other autocrats closer to China, offering them protection against U.S. regime-change agendas.

Because of its non-interference doctrine, Beijing does not shape its partners’ internal strategic capacity; it must accept this as a given. As a result, the effectiveness of China’s alliance model ultimately depends on the preexisting strength and pragmatism of its partners.

In Iran’s case, the regime has fallen into long-term strategic stagnation through its heavy reliance on Shia-based militias across the Middle East; what began as a tactical instrument has hardened into a structural constraint shaping both Iran’s foreign and domestic policy.

China is not opposed to Iran’s use of proxies or militias per se; rather, Beijing is concerned about the extent to which Iran has become locked into this strategy. The growing militarization of domestic and foreign policymaking – driven by the influence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force – limited Iran’s strategic options. This dynamic has drained Iran’s economic and political resources and made proxy networks its dominant –  though not exclusive – instrument of foreign policy. While the Axis of Resistance achieved limited strategic gains, Israel’s systematic dismantling of Hezbollah and Hamas has exposed the fragility of this approach. The attrition of its proxy infrastructure now leaves it with fewer tools and diminishing leverage to pursue its regional agenda.

Pragmatism here is the capacity of a state to translate ideological narratives into workable governance and strategic interests by prioritizing functionality, adaptability, and institutional effectiveness over rigid doctrine or symbolic resistance. In practice, this allows countries such as Iran, China, and other U.S. adversaries to maintain deterrence and challenge U.S. dominance while still engaging in routine diplomacy and economic relations with the United States or its allies. This logic echoes the classical Chinese stratagem of “hiding a knife behind a smile.”

A comparison with Pakistan helps clarify this emphasis on pragmatism, where Beijing has maintained a more productive partnership. Although Islamabad is not part of the CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea), it a long-standing partner of China, it maintains anti-liberal values, indirectly opposes U.S. dominance, and sustains ties with militant networks while engaging effectively in formal diplomacy – such as its recent military pact with Saudi Arabia – and, crucially, preserving a relatively functioning economy. From Beijing’s perspective, the Pakistan model highlights what Iran currently lacks: a sense of strategic pragmatism.

Even before China embraced pragmatism under Deng Xiaoping, Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan helped mediate the historic 1971 meeting between Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai, helping lay the foundation for the normalization of Sino-U.S. relations.

In the India–Pakistan crisis of May 2025, Chinese military equipment – particularly the J-10C fighter jet – was deployed in a peer-level confrontation for the first time. Despite conflicting reports from the battlefield, it is reasonable to say that Pakistan emerged from the conflict with confidence.

China’s military assistance has produced uneven results across its partners. Cooperation with Pakistan has substantially enhanced Islamabad’s military modernization and deterrence capacity, whereas Chinese support to Iran and Venezuela has not produced comparable positive results. In Iran, the HQ-9 Chinese air defense performed poorly during the 12 days of fighting last year, and also failed to protect the Ayatollah from assassination by an Israeli strike; in Venezuela, the JY-27A mobile radars failed to provide early warning during Maduro’s kidnapping. In both cases, the shortcomings likely reflected either system underperformance or the limited capacity of local officers to operate and integrate the equipment effectively. This variation suggests that under Beijing’s “no-interference” partnership model, Chinese military assistance is only as effective as a partner’s existing military institutions allow it to be.

Pakistan entered the partnership with an existing military establishment, a functioning diplomatic apparatus, and a political system capable, however imperfectly, of sustaining alignment with Beijing’s interests.

Allies Are Built, Not Found

The problem for Beijing is that this model only works when partners already possess a basic level of domestic stability and strategic pragmatism. If China’s pool of potential partners is limited to states that are already functional and aligned, its ability to expand and sustain a broader coalition under conditions of intensifying great-power competition becomes constrained. Iran illustrates this dilemma. Unlike Pakistan, Iran’s ideological rigidity constrains its strategic flexibility, making it difficult to separate state interests from revolutionary commitments. U.S.-led sanctions further reduce its value as a partner. China is left with a state that shares its adversary but cannot act as an effective or reliable instrument of coalition-building.

By contrast, the United States historically built durable partnerships by actively shaping the domestic foundations of its allies. In postwar Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe, U.S. support was accompanied by conditions, institutional reforms, and sustained political influence that went far beyond non-interference.

Marshall Plan assistance, for example, was explicitly tied to economic liberalization and limits on the political influence of communist parties in countries such as Italy and France. This helped produce allies that were not only aligned against communism but also shared a common economic agenda and form of political statecraft.

Contemporary China has pursued the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) differently: following its non-interference policies, the BRI often does not come with explicit political or economic reform conditions. The main beneficiaries are not necessarily China’s strategic partners, nor do recipient countries necessarily become strategic partners as a result. In many cases, BRI projects contributed to underperforming projects, unsustainable loans, and indirect debt traps. While China has at times used BRI-related leverage coercively toward smaller states, BRI projects overall do not systematically translate into strategic alliance-building.

This pattern reveals a broader structural limitation in China’s alliance-building strategy: without mechanisms to shape partner capacity rather than merely accommodate it, Beijing risks remaining dependent on a narrow set of allies whose usefulness is contingent.

These contrasting approaches to partnership-building help explain why U.S. alliances have proven more resilient over time, even amid shifting domestic politics and changes to the global order. Washington continues to benefit from committed partners: Japan, South Korea, and Australia’s commitment to Pacific security and Europe’s collective defense of Ukraine are all products of post–World War II alliance-building. Yet U.S. alliances have also imposed strategic costs. Israel, in particular, illustrates how a committed partner can become a source of reputational damage and regional entanglement, constraining Washington’s diplomatic flexibility.

China’s transactional model, by contrast, avoids these obligations – offering partners economic benefits without demanding institutional alignment or mutual defense commitments. This flexibility has real appeal, particularly, though not exclusively, to authoritarian governments. Yet flexibility has its limits. Without the institutional depth and mutual commitment that underpin U.S. alliances, China’s partnerships remain transactional, and the CRINK grouping, despite its shared anti-U.S. alignment, has yet to cohere into a reliable strategic bloc.

What’s next for Beijing’s Model?

If Xi Jinping intends to take Taiwan by force in the near future, China will face major obstacles under the current alliance landscape. For sure, Beijing’s partners will provide some level of support, but domestic constraints and limited technical capabilities will significantly restrict what they can offer.

This makes it even more important for Beijing to cultivate partners with potential preexisting capacity, such as Iran. Tehran retains a functioning state apparatus, a loyal military, and a deep-rooted anti-Western and revolutionary heritage, similar in origin to China’s own. Yet it has pursued a misguided strategic path that has trapped the country in a cycle of stagnation.

From this perspective, Beijing has two options: it can cautiously wait to see whether Iran eventually adopts a Deng Xiaoping–style path of reform and opening or remains trapped in perpetual revolutionary rigidity. Alternatively, China could use Iran’s post-war vulnerability to experiment with strategic influence over Tehran, guiding it toward a “Pakistan-style” model: one that is strategically pragmatic, diplomatically flexible, and closely aligned with Beijing

The latter option would require Beijing to go beyond building roads, ports, or supplying arms. China would need experienced diplomats, senior political figures, and strategic advisers capable of shaping partners’ behavior and institutions while preserving non-interference in ideological and leadership matters.

China and its allies are learning institutions, and we should not underestimate their capacity for strategic adaptation.

How China might implement such influence remains to be seen and will require the development of its own institutional capacities. Nonetheless, Chinese leaders should recognize the risk: either Beijing helps shape its partners’ domestic trajectories, or the United States will.

Ahmad Syarif is Doctor of International Affairs candidate at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.

U.S.-Israel war on Iran

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