China and America in the Persian Gulf } 569
sort of Leninist “transmission belt” linking the party center with the masses.
In this case, the anti-US hegemony analysis common in Chinese media does
not drive Chinese foreign policy. That policy is, rather, driven by oil, expand-
ing export and labor service markets, and mollifying the United States—all
leading to low-key cooperation with the United States.
The other possibility is that the content of elite foreign policy journals does
indeed reflect the thinking of the party center. In this case, Beijing’s “don’t bar
the way” approach to US aggressiveness in the Persian Gulf may have been a
way of “inviting the gentleman to enter the caldron” (qing jun ru weng), while
demanding a price for permitting entrance.^25 In this case, China, of course,
would not be the cause of American aggressiveness. But since aggression is what
hegemonist superpowers like the United States do, and since American aggres-
siveness in the Persian Gulf is, at least, far away from China’s major interests
and may well help drain the American hegemonists of their appetite for aggres-
sion, having the United States rampaging around in the Gulf may serve China’s
interests. Of course, this type of thinking would have to be kept highly secret.
Interestingly, in Chinese foreign policy accounts of US Gulf policy or US-Iraq
or US-Iran relations, there is virtually nothing about how China’s interests are
affected by US policy or how China is in fact responding, except perhaps an af-
firmation of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, or the like.
Constrained Partnership with the Islamic Republic of Iran
Deterioration of PRC-US relations in the early 1990s was paralleled by in-
tensification of cooperation between the PRC and the Islamic Republic of
Iran (IRI—the formal name of the revolutionary regime established in 1979).
One important reason for the latter process was an Iranian drive for eco-
nomic reconstruction after the end of the long war with Iraq. That war ended
in September 1988, and on the night of June 3–4, 1989—the same night the
PLA carried out the Beijing Massacre—came the death of Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The combination of these two events, the
end of a long, impoverishing war and the death of a charismatic dictator,
unleashed a powerful demand in Iran for improvement in economic condi-
tions. Housing, energy, and infrastructure of every kind were gravely inad-
equate. Poverty was widespread and deep. People, including demobilized
soldiers, needed jobs. As IRI leaders shifted gear to meet these dire develop-
mental needs, China moved in to supply a large part of what Iran needed and
could pay for with lucrative petroleum exports. China’s post-1978 develop-
ment promoted exports, and Iran offered a big market for Chinese capital
goods, consumer goods, and labor and engineering services.
PRC and IRI leaders had gotten to know each other through arms sales
and diplomatic maneuvering at the United Nations during the Iran-Iraq war.