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China is “positive and open” on this month’s visit by Donald Trump as it signalled its eagerness to host a successful summit despite the US attack on Iran.
Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, on Sunday stressed the need for dialogue with the US even as he said the war in Iran “should not have happened”.
The first visit by a US president in almost a decade will come at a critical moment for Beijing and Washington as they seek to repair trade relations and manage the fallout of American military interventions across the globe.
Wang reiterated China’s calls for an “immediate” end to military operations in Iran, but his accommodative tone on the meeting with Xi Jinping — which the White House has said will go ahead on March 31 — signalled the talks were important to Beijing.
The agenda of the “high-level exchanges” between the two leaders was “already on the table”, Wang said at a press conference held as part of the National People’s Congress.
“Failure to engage between the two nations would only lead to misunderstandings and misjudgments, escalating towards confrontation and harming the world,” Wang said, according to a Reuters translation of his remarks.
The war in the Middle East poses both geopolitical and economic challenges to China, the world’s biggest crude oil importer, which has long sought to insulate itself against energy supply shocks.
China relies on Iran for 13 per cent of its crude imports. A larger portion of its oil and gas imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz and are at risk due to the hostilities.
Michal Meidan, head of China Energy Research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said the “implications for China will be felt over the coming months”.
“The impact will be more acute in a number of provinces and subsectors, given China’s reliance on the Middle East for crude, products and LNG.”
The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei early in the war between the US and Iran came weeks after the US capture of Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela, which Beijing also criticised.
China had forged close ties with the South American nation and was by far the main buyer of its oil last year, according to data provider Kpler.
In an official summary of his remarks on Sunday, Wang said that “Middle Eastern affairs should be determined by regional countries independently” and that “seeking regime change will find no popular support”.
“The history of the Middle East tells the world time and again that force provides no solution and armed conflict will only increase hatred and breed new crises,” he said.
Discussions during the three-day Trump visit to China are expected to revolve around a one-year trade truce the two sides struck last October.
The US president said last month that the visit to China would be a “wild one”. “We have to put on the biggest display you’ve ever had in the history of China,” he said.
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