When Saudi Arabia recently asked the U.S. for help against Yemen’s rebel Houthis, Riyadh got some promises; since then, it has turned to Britain.
Will the Saudis reach out to Red China next? Probably not, since Beijing is already in the mix. This week, “Open-source analysts say missile debris found in Marib Governorate, Yemen, came from a Chinese-made DF-15A, possibly fired by Saudi Arabia for the first time.”
It appears that Saudis were firing Chinese-made missiles into Houthi territory.
Both sides
Beijing is actually playing both sides, both the Yemeni government (and its backers, like Saudi Arabia) and Yemen’s rebels. While the Saudis get assembled missiles from Beijing, the Houthis get missile components to build their own. Meanwhile, the UN-recognized, Beijing-backed official government of Yemen gets a kind of encouragement. Shao Zheng, chargé d’affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Yemen, “expressed optimism about the future of Chinese-Yemeni relations, calling them ‘bright’ and highlighting successful cooperation in various fields over the years.”
That Yemen has not taken Beijing to task is baffling.
The Institute for National Security Studies recorded the CCP’s perfidy back in 2024: “In the past two years…China has supported UN Security Council resolutions classifying and condemning the Houthis as a terrorist organization. Nonetheless, there has been no official Chinese condemnation of the Houthi attacks in the past three months. Chinese officials have not uttered the word ‘Houthis,’ even when a Chinese ship was attacked. China never mentioned or condemned the dozens of missiles and drones that the Houthis have fired against Israel, nor has it condemned Hamas and its horrific massacre in Israel on October 7.”
The attacks on “shipping in which [Red] China has an interest” occurred in July 2024 and involved “anti-shipping ballistic missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and explosive unmanned surface vehicles because the Houthis appear to have consulted outdated materials that showed [one such attacked vessel] as British-owned. After the attack, Houthi spokesmen stated (incorrectly) that the vessel was attacked because it had British owner, Maritime Spotlight data.”
In Beijing, though its ship had been attacked, mum was the word.
Outliers
In January 2025, another think tank, The Atlantic Council, connected a couple of dots.
Dot one: “US intelligence sources recently told Israeli media that since November 2023, the Houthis have used Chinese-made components to target Red Sea vessels in exchange for immunity for Chinese-flagged ships.”
Dot two: “By January 2024, Lloyd’s List data showed a notable increase in the proportion of China-linked tonnage passing through the Red Sea, with seventeen out of twenty-seven vessels making port calls in Russia. By September 2024, China-linked vessels stood out as outliers in maintaining transits in the strategic chokepoints, even as global traffic through the region remained far below normal levels.”
And so “China’s reported agreement with the Houthis may have encouraged the country’s shipping industry to take the high-risk route in order to capitalize on reduced competition.”
The CCP’s double dealing pays in cash.
Beijing’s support of the Houthis goes further than supply of missile parts.
In 2025, the U.S. State Department said that the U.S. could “confirm the reporting that Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company Limited is directly supporting Iran-backed Houthi terrorist attacks on U.S. interests.” Chang Guang supplied (still supplies?) the Houthis with imagery of U.S. and international targets. The firm has connections with the People’s Liberation Army.
Somalis and Houthis
In 2023, there had been some communist chest beating with “the completion of the PLA Navy’s 1,600th [Red Sea–Gulf of Aden] escort mission. To date, more than 7,200 vessels have been escorted…. More than 50 percent of the 7,200 escorted ships were foreign vessels, which shows the PLA Navy has made important contributions in promoting the building of a maritime community with a shared future through concrete action.”
The CCP began sending its PLA Navy into the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in 2008. These anti-piracy convoys managed to avoid any unseemly violence against Somali pirates while conducting their peaceful protection missions. So: 1,600 missions and not a pirate in sight.
Were its forces a deterrent? For the sake of argument, let’s give them that.
But now we are in the new era of Houthi Red Sea piracy. The rebels have taken control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. They control it. Directly across that strait lies Djibouti and Red China’s naval base.
This is a great opportunity for communist China to build “a shared future through concrete action.”
Or to showboat 1,600 more missions bestowing bragging rights but no help at all. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “China Is Stoking a New Cold War With the West” by Steven Mosher (November 7, 2023)
