Normalization with the Asian Powers } 4 47
highly influential member of Khomeini’s faction and ultimately (in 1989) suc-
cessor to Khomeini as supreme leader. The publicly announced purpose of
Khamenei’s visit was to explain to China’s leaders Iran’s position on the
war. China’s efforts seem to have been somewhat successful; Khamenei later
said during his visit that the fact that China had declared neutrality in the
Iran-Iraq war did not mean it did not sympathize with Iran. In fact, China
did sympathize with Iran, Khamenei explained, and shared with Iran simi-
lar views on a range of international issues. By 1982, US sources estimated
that China and North Korea supplied 40 percent of Iran’s arms imports.
By 1987, that number had risen to 70 percent. Iranian infantry forces were
armed increasingly with Chinese weapons in what became the largest land
war since World War II. By the time the war ended in August 1988, some
262,000 Iranian soldiers had died in the war, about 2.2 percent of Iran’s total
population of 39 million.
Beijing rejected American pressure to stop arms sales to Iran. As the tides
of war shifted in Iran’s favor in 1982, and as Tehran proclaimed the objective
of its revolutionary Islamic war to be liberation of Iraqi Shiites and Jerusalem
from “the Zionists,” Washington mobilized the international community
to pressure Tehran to the negotiating table by cutting off its arms imports.
Beijing refused to go along—although it did agree in 1987 to stop selling
Silkworm anti-ship missiles, which Tehran was using to attack oil tankers in
the Gulf. In short, Beijing stood by Tehran in the face of American pressure.
The PRC thus proved to Tehran that it could be a trustworthy and reliable
partner.
Beijing achieved a major breakthrough in relations with the IRI in 1983.
One of the MFA’s old Iran hands, He Ying, called on a new, young IRI ambas-
sador in Beijing to confess Chinese mistakes in earlier thinking about Iranian
developments. Previously, he explained, China had viewed Iranian develop-
ments from the perspective of the global struggle against Soviet hegemony
and overestimated the role of Soviet subversion in Iranian affairs. China
had recently undertaken a major reevaluation of events, He Ying said, and
now recognized that its earlier view had been mistaken. China now had a
much more positive understanding of Iran’s revolutionary quest. He asked
the Iranian ambassador to convey these new Chinese understandings to
Te h r a n.^35 The Iranian ambassador, Ali Khorram (a PhD in nuclear physics
from Chicago University), suggested that the new Chinese understandings
were so important that He Ying himself should convey them to Iran’s lead-
ers. This he did in late January. Through meetings with Ali Khamenei, the
two sides agreed on the need for a “common stand in the struggle against
imperialism and colonialism.” This opened the way for an exchange of for-
eign ministers—Ali Akbar Velayati to the PRC in September 1983 and Wu
Xueqian to the IRI in October 1984. The Velayati-Wu exchanges produced
several agreements on economic, cultural, and scientific and technological