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As global outrage grows over Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, China has focused on harnessing the widening divide between Washington’s and the global south’s stances on the war to boost Beijing’s own foreign-policy ambitions.
As global outrage grows over Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, China has focused on harnessing the widening divide between Washington’s and the global south’s stances on the war to boost Beijing’s own foreign-policy ambitions.
Over the course of the Israel-Hamas war, China has been careful to stay on the sidelines, wary of miring itself in a spiraling conflict or jeopardizing its regional ties. But as Washington faces fierce pushback over its support of Israel, Beijing has also seized the opportunity to align itself with the so-called global south—a collection of dozens of countries, including Brazil, India, South Africa, and Pakistan—which has overwhelmingly condemned Israel’s actions, sharply diverging from the U.S. position.
China is “mostly hanging back and letting the United States collect abuse,” said Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The only interest China’s pursuing in the Middle East is watching while a larger division opens between the U.S. and large parts of the global south,” he added.
From the beginning, China’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war has been characterized by caution. Chinese President Xi Jinping, for example, waited nearly two weeks before weighing in after Hamas’s initial Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, while early government statements refrained from even naming Hamas—a response that angered Israeli officials. In the months since, China has positioned itself as a peacemaker, calling for a cease-fire and a Palestinian state without going so far as to directly involve itself in the conflict.
China has “clearly eschewed any substantive role in the ongoing conflict,” Patricia Kim, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Foreign Policy in an email. While Beijing wants to portray itself as a regional power broker, she said, “it has zero interest in serving as a security provider or directly intervening in challenging situations that might jeopardize its relationships in the region.”
These dynamics are evident in the Red Sea, where months of Houthi attacks against commercial shipping, undertaken in what the Houthis describe as solidarity with Palestinians, have disrupted global trade. Yet even as a growing number of countries dispatch ships to safeguard the corridor, China has resisted intervening with its own naval forces. The furthest Beijing has gone in getting involved is privately pressing Iran—which backs the Houthis—to step in, Reuters reported, although Iranian officials have denied the reports.
Beijing’s approach stands in sharp contrast to that of Washington, which has not only long been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters since the nation’s start, backing the country with billions in military aid, but has also acted as the country’s primary defender on the international stage since the war began, wielding the United States’ veto on the United Nations Security Council to block resolutions backed by dozens of countries—including many in the global south, as well as China—calling for a cease-fire. The Biden administration has also taken action in the Red Sea, launching strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and mobilizing an international task force to help ensure freedom of navigation in the corridor.
Yet as Israel’s military campaign in Gaza inflicts a devastating humanitarian toll—Israeli forces have killed as many as 26,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the beginning of the war, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry—much of the world has grown increasingly frustrated with, and disillusioned by, Washington’s unwavering support for Israel. More than half a million people in Gaza currently face “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity,” the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned in December.
And Beijing has been trying to capitalize on the divide. “They feel that this is going to further undermine the U.S. in the eyes of the rest of the world, in the parts of the world that they care about,” said Eric Olander, the co-founder of the China Global South Project. “This plays right into their strategy for the Chinese—to show how isolated the Americans are, to show how they’re out of sync with the rest of the world, and just show the hypocrisy of the Americans.”
“The Chinese are playing this, in my view, quite skillfully in terms of pursuing their own foreign policy and promoting some of the values that they’re trying to say about the shortcomings of the U.S-led international order,” he added.
As part of this strategy, China has publicly framed itself as a peacemaker, proposing a five-point peace plan and calling for a Israeli-Palestinian peace conference. In October, Beijing dispatched its regional envoy to Qatar and Egypt to urge a cease-fire; since then, it has pledged some $4 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza, hosted a delegation of Arab and Muslim ministers, and participated in a virtual summit of the BRICS bloc (then comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) over the conflict.
“China has been working tirelessly to promote the cessation of hostilities and the restoration of peace,” Chinese U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said at a Security Council briefing during the first month of the war. “China will continue to stand on the side of international fairness and justice, on the side of international law, and on the side of the legitimate aspirations of the Arab and Islamic world.”
During his broader tour of Africa in January, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also leveraged his trip to Egypt—one of the mediators in the Israel-Hamas war—to reiterate calls for a cease-fire and Palestinian state.
Yet experts say that Beijing’s actions are mostly performative, resulting in few concrete outcomes. The November BRICS summit, for one, failed to generate a joint statement or practical road map forward, as Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations noted in Foreign Affairs. China’s proposed peace plan also charged the U.N. Security Council—and not Beijing—with the responsibility of resolving the conflict, according to the Brookings Institution.
China’s seriousness on mediating the Israel-Hamas war is just “smoke and mirrors,” wrote Ahmed Aboudouh, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, in December, citing “the opaqueness of China’s diplomatic language and the insignificant sum of money provided by the world’s second-largest economy” to Gaza.
Rather than miring itself in the conflict, Beijing has focused on making digs at Washington and contrasting the two countries’ positions, part of its bid to cast doubt on the Biden administration’s global credibility. These efforts have been on full display at the U.N. Security Council, where China vetoed a U.S. draft resolution in October after criticizing it for not calling for a cease-fire; Russia also vetoed the resolution.
The United States “introduced a new draft resolution that set aside the consensus of the members,” Zhang said. Even after other council members—including Beijing—proposed amendments, he said, Washington ignored their “major concerns” and introduced a draft resolution that “confuses right and wrong.”
Later in December, after Washington vetoed a Security Council draft resolution pushing for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, Beijing again leveraged the vote to position itself alongside the global south and single out Washington’s position. As one of the resolution’s nearly 100 co-sponsors, Beijing felt “great disappointment and regret that the draft has been vetoed by the US,” Zhang said. “All this shows once again what [a] double standard is.”
State media echoed these sentiments, further drawing attention to the diverging U.S. and Chinese positions. “It is contradictory to tolerate the continuation of the conflict while claiming to care about the safety and humanitarian needs of the people in Gaza,” the Global Times said, referring to the U.S. veto. “It is self-deceptive to advocate preventing the spillover of the conflict while tolerating its continuation.”
More recently, Beijing has also aligned itself with the global south in one of the clearest cases of outrage over Israel’s actions: South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Although the ICJ has no way to enforce its rulings, South Africa’s case reflects the growing international pressure building against Israel, which has dismissed the charges as “false” and “outrageous.”
While the ICJ has not yet ruled on the question of whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and likely won’t do so for years, last Friday, it responded to South Africa’s request for the court to command an emergency suspension of Israel’s military campaign. In its ruling, the ICJ ordered Israel to “take all measures” to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza.
After the decision was announced, Chinese state media expressed hope that it would push “some major countries to stop turning a blind eye” to Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Biden administration, in contrast, reiterated its position that Pretoria’s genocide allegations were “unfounded,” although it also said the ICJ ruling was in line with its own calls for Israel to ensure civilians’ safety.
China has long prioritized cultivating political and economic ties with countries across the global south, with Wang, the foreign minister, most recently wrapping up his first foreign trip of 2024 by visiting Egypt, Tunisia, Togo, and Ivory Coast. His trip marks the 34th straight year that a Chinese foreign minister has made Africa the destination of their first global trip of the year; Wang traveled to Brazil and Jamaica afterward.
“China decided to treat Israel as collateral damage, compared to more than 50 countries in the global south,” said Aboudouh, the Atlantic Council expert. “China wants these countries’ support for its own vision—for global governance and its strategic priorities.”
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