China Pushes for US Visit Amid Weakening Iran Ties

China wants a much-anticipated visit by President Donald Trump to Beijing to go ahead and is working to keep it on track-even as the U.S. publicly challenges Communist Party leaders in Beijing to help in its war against Iran, a long-term friend of China, and appears to want to delay the visit date.

China's Foreign Ministry did not directly react to a threat from Trump at the weekend to cancel the visit, which is still due to take place at the end of March and early April, unless China join a proposed U.S.-led naval patrol to end Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

The blockade by Iran's Revolutionary Guards is pushing oil prices high and could trigger a global energy crisis. Trump has also said he may delay the visit due to the Iran war.

Speaking to media in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian did not address the patrol request, or comment critically on the delay. Instead, Lin suggested that China had its eye on the prize-the upcoming visit.

“Head of state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in the strategic guidance of China-U.S. relations,” Lin told reporters on Monday. “China and the U.S. are maintaining contact over President Trump’s visit to China." He added a day later that Beijing and Washington were in talks over “the timing and related matters of President Trump’s visit to China."

Chinese state media, which is tightly censored, has widely reported on Trump’s request for naval patrol assistance from allied states such as Britain and Japan, but not on the request to Beijing.

Newsweek asked the White House whether Trump was testing China ahead of the visit, particularly over the patrols, and was referred to a press conference on Monday where Trump said: “I’m almost doing it in some cases not because we need them, but because I want to find out how they react.” He did not specify which countries he was referring to, but repeatedly mentioned China, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Most of “their oil comes out of this strait. They should be in here very happily helping us,” Trump said, referring to China.

“China is signaling. They seem still to want Trump to visit even though he literally eliminating their allies one by one, and even now after he said he might delay the visit,” said Michael Lucci, the founder of State Armor, a U.S. political organisation that says it enacts state solutions to global security threats, and that focuses on China. Lucci was referring also to the U.S. January invasion of Venezuela, a former close friend of China’s.

The U.S. Is Keeping China Off-Balance

Trump’s visit could be postponed due to the Iran war, said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, D.C.

“Honestly, at this point, if U.S. is still bogged down by the war and the world is plunged into an energy crisis, that will obviously change the focus of the trip, and it may not be so shocking that the trip gets pushed down the road,” Sun told Newsweek.

On the issue of joint patrols, Sun said: “China might be able to exert pressure, but it will come with conditions that U.S. and Israel have to reduce their strikes."

Overall, China was struggling to find firm footing with an unpredictable U.S. administration, she said. “The Chinese are often thrown off balance by the changing pace and priorities of the Trump administration."

Trump will be accompanied in Beijing by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also is his acting national security adviser. China has sanctioned Rubio, but Lin, the foreign ministry spokesperson, said that Rubio was welcome as the sanctions had applied only to Rubio’s previous role as a U.S. senator.

A ‘Shrewd' Move by Trump?

Asking China to join the patrols aimed at keeping the Strait of Hormuz open for global energy deliveries was “shrewd,” said an analyst at a Washington institute that is close to administration thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the issue was sensitive.

China had long been playing a double game in the region, for example by providing satellite imagery to the Houthis, an Iran-supported militia which has attacked international shipping in the Middle East-even though China itself was dependent on oil from the region.

“It calls them out,” the person said.

Multiple sensitive issues are up for discussion in Beijing including China’s trade imbalances with the world, U.S. tariffs, Chinese military threats against Taiwan and U.S. weapons sales to the Beijing-claimed island. Preliminary trade talk were underway in Paris between U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China's Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Partnership of Convenience-for China

Analysts on the ground in the Middle East said it was extremely unlikely China would particular in a joint patrol, although it has long had naval vessels in the region on anti-piracy missions. That was because China sees itself as a U.S. peer.

"Because of the way China sees itself, it won't join a coalition led by the U.S., because they are peers and competitors. China likes to go it alone,” said Tuvia Gering, an analyst at Israel-based Planet Nine, a cyber and technology company, and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub.

“Trump is trying to put pressure on China, and this is one way to do that,” said Galia Lavi, deputy director of the Diane and Guildford Glazer Israel-China Policy Center at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

But Lavi also said the request to help was unlikely to work.

She pointed out that Chinese naval vessels in the past had failed to respond to calls for help during attacks by the Houthis on commercial vessels at another regional maritime chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea. The attacks on scores of ships in recent years sparked two efforts to protect global shipping: Operation Prosperity Guardian, led by the previous U.S. administration of President Joe Biden, and the European Union-led Operation Aspides.

In one incident, though Chinese naval ships were present, “Chinese ships did not respond when the Houthis were shooting. Two ships turned and went away,” said Lavi.

China has also placed a massive spy ship in the region since before the start of hostilities, Lavi noted. The Liaowang 1 is a kind of floating supercomputer with wide monitoring and collection capabilities including into space.

“They are learning and gathering information for themselves,” Lavi said. “I don’t think they are sending information to Iran. They share only if it’s for China’s benefit,” she said.

Iran just wasn’t as important to China as their 25-year-long, strategic cooperation partnership, signed in 2021, might suggest.

“Iran’s value in the eyes of China has decreased,” said Gering.

While Iran remained convenient-especially as a source of steeply discounted oil for China-its value to China was continually declining as it has suffered serial attacks and defeats at the hands of Israel and the U.S. on its territory, as well as on its regional proxies such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia, Gering said, pointing to the “dismantling” of its key proxy in the “walkie-talkie” attacks of 2024.

Wider Gulf Interests at Stake

China expects the Iranian system to survive in a degraded form, but Beijing is more interested in ensuring its interests in the rest of the Gulf region remained robustly represented, said Sun of the Stimson Center.

“China's economic relationship with [Gulf Cooperation Council] is far more significant for China than its ties with Iran,” Sun said.

“Iran has been under sanctions, which increases the cost to the Chinese, and Iran is inconsistent, making cooperation unsustainable. Now the war further proves the geopolitical volatility associated with Iran, making it even less desirable a partner,” she said.

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This story was originally published March 17, 2026 at 7:30 AM.