James Kynge

I've sort of boiled it down to what I consider to be three main areas.

And the first one I'm rather fancifully calling, you know, the principle of the tiger's front paw.

because a tiger uses its front paw as its prime weapon because it's so powerful.

And in China's case, it uses not military or diplomatic muscle as its prime weapon,

but economic power.

And so this crisis in the Middle East is one in which China has to back off in terms of military and diplomatic initiatives and concentrate on its economic power.

And so in this regard, you've already mentioned China's main priority is to keep the oil

flowing through the Strait of Hormuz so that it can keep its cities and factories running back home.

And it needs to avoid antagonizing the U.S.

too much in order to avoid economic reprisals from Washington, such as tariffs or other forms of economic sanction.

Second,

I think China always tries to keep its powder dry.

And in this regard, I'm talking about it strictly prioritizes its crucial theater of focus, crucial theater of interest.

Iran and the Strait of Hormuz are of course important to China, but China's crucial focus is on the areas around its borders, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and of course, Japan and Korea.

So China doesn't want to spread itself too thin.

It can't focus on everywhere all the time.

The official word for this is periphery diplomacy.

It's focused on the countries and the regions around China.

And this has been the case for actually thousands of years.

So I think that's the second crucial kind of guiding philosophy that China's diplomacy has.