338 { China’s Quest
in Beijing talking with Zhou Enlai, the shah himself was in Moscow discuss-
ing affairs with Soviet leaders. With Ji Pengfei’s visit, China outbid Moscow
by endorsing Iran’s preeminence in the Gulf. Ji during his visit laid out what
would become one of the fundamental and enduring principles of China’s
relations with Iran and the Persian Gulf. China believed, Ji stated during
his visit, that the security affairs of the Persian Gulf should be handled by
the countries around that Gulf, not by extra-regional powers. Iran was an
“important country” in the Gulf region, Ji said, and was gravely menaced
by the growing infiltration, rivalry, and expansion of “certain big powers.” Ji
continued:
We have consistently held that the affairs of a given ... region must be
managed by the countries and peoples of that region. ... Iran and some
other Persian Gulf countries hold that the affairs of this region should
be jointly managed by the Persian Gulf countries and brook no out-
side interference. This is a just position and we express our firm support
for it.^51
The “littoral principle” (as it may perhaps be called) enunciated by Ji
Pengfei in 1973 represented a long-term strategic bet on Iran, and a bid for
partnership with that emerging regional power.^52 While this statement im-
plicitly gave equal standing to all the countries littoral to the Gulf, and could
be envisioned as endorsement of some sort of cooperative collective secu-
rity arrangement, the realities of power pointed in a different direction. The
reality was that Iran’s power far outweighed all but one power in the Gulf.
Only Iraq had power adequate to rival or balance Iran. Once the realities of
power are taken into consideration, in the context of 1973, Ji Pengfei’s “littoral
principle” represented an endorsement of the shah’s push for Iran to replace
Britain as the “policeman of the Gulf,” a policy supported by the US as well.
But the principle enunciated by Ji Pengfei in 1973 would survive the specific
circumstances of 1973. As late as 1990, long after the demise of the shah’s re-
gime, during the crisis following Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait,
Chinese leaders would reiterate the principle during visits by Iranian leaders
to Beijing.^53
In the mid-1970s, Beijing and Tehran found a remarkable convergence of
interests. Both were deeply alarmed by the vigorous advance of Soviet influ-
ence across the region: India’s, Iraq’s and Egypt’s treaties of friendship with
the Soviet Union, South Yemen’s alignment with the Soviet Union and its sub-
version in southern Oman, and Pakistan’s partition by Soviet-backed India.
In 1973, Afghanistan’s monarchy was overthrown and that country began to
move closer to the Soviet Union, with Soviet aid and, as it turned out, sub-
version advancing rapidly. A 1974 coup by Marxist army officers in Ethiopia
brought socialism along with Soviet advisors and Cuban military forces into
that country, moving it into Moscow’s camp. In 1978, Marxist circles in the