Columnist Stephen Green put together a crib sheet, “Sorry, Media: China Is Not the Big Winner in the Iran War” (April 27, 2026). The conclusion that communist China is “winning the Iran war” is, he notes, “the new king of press narratives.” Some items from his collection:
Foreign Affairs: “The Iran War Is a Win for China.”
The Guardian: “Who can claim victory if Iran ceasefire holds? An early winner is China.”
Axios: “Behind the Curtain: China wins by watching.”
The Associated Press: “Iran war’s global energy crisis sharpens China’s advantage in clean tech.”
Deutsche Welle: “Why China is winning the Iran war.”
Not quite
Green counters the claims with a New York Times article describing how Beijing is feeling an economic crunch. “Rising oil and natural gas prices from the war in Iran are beginning to weigh on the Chinese economy, further slowing already anemic consumer spending and hurting critical export sectors.”
But not all of his media citations can be answered with economics. The Guardian piece gauges a win in the way that “Beijing’s powerbrokers” are “being credited with pushing Iran towards agreeing to the ceasefire, bolstering its status as a regional mediator.” Prestige win then.
Axios sees gains in foreign adventurism: “Chinese President Xi Jinping has spent the Iran war doing what he does best—patiently exploiting America’s distraction and discord.” No concrete gains are enumerated.
As for the AP and its “clean tech” angle—a boost to the clean-tech industry is a potential future second order benefit, certainly not a “win.”
The Foreign Affairs article sees the war putting President Trump at a disadvantage when next meeting Xi Jinping.
And the Deutsche Welle headline is just clickbait. The discussion offered is not about how Beijing is winning anything: “This is not anything that [Red] China wants. None of the chaos is in [Red] China’s interest.” The headline reverses the meaning of the content.
Green implies that all this bad behavior comes from the impulse to build “media narratives” rather than produce direct reporting or reason to conclusions. (Look at Deutsche Welle.) The “wins” tend to be wispy, indeterminate, conceptual rather than tangible.
Then there’s the “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” category of article.
The BBC says: “China is not feeling the shock of war in the Middle East—yet. But it is feeling the ripples.”
RT News tells us about “What China stands to lose—and gain—from the Iran war.”
Foreign Policy says: “China Doesn’t Always Win When the U.S. Loses.”
Rippling through
The Financial Times is unequivocal, listing a catalog of disasters befalling the communists right now.
“Supply disruptions have emerged across key products that form the backbone of Chinese industry.”
Small manufacturers are having to raise prices on all new orders as input prices increase. Orders are being downsized and postponed.
Risks are emerging “across high-end manufacturing operations cut off from vital raw material supplies, including industrial gases such as helium used in critical sectors including semiconductors and medical technology.”
Planning is not possible. Cameron Johnson, supply chain consultant, says, “It’s scarcity, it’s supply tightness, it’s a lack of visibility when things will be turned back on.”
This is chaos. Chaos is not a win for Beijing.
Economist George Magnus, research associate at the China Centre, University of Oxford, puts this starkly, saying that Beijing’s passivity in the war “underscores something else that is important for [Red] China. It craves stability both at home and abroad as the essential backdrop against which to pursue its policies and political agendas. The current environment therefore is anathema to [Red] China, whose economic statecraft and broad goals hinge around the smooth conduct of trade and investment. This requires some form of persistent globalisation, open sea lanes, functional supply chains, technological integration, economic interdependence it can control, and stable financial markets.” Otherwise, the model “simply doesn’t work.”
From the Jerusalem Post: “The war in Iran is weighing on China’s economy, with car sales plunging, toy factories shutting down, and thousands of workers taking to the streets following a surge in plastic and energy prices.”
Does that sound like a win to anyone?
Analyst Gordon Chang says that the only way Red China can grow “is to export more…and once factories start to fail, then, you know, this will ripple through.”
Reports say the factories are failing. The rippling has begun. Beijing is the loser. And the longer this war lasts, the steeper the losses. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
