While the rest of Asia scrambled for fuel, rationed cooking gas and emptied strategic reserves, Beijing watched the Iran war with a rare advantage. The New York Times put it plainly: “This is not China’s war, but Beijing started preparing for it years ago.” As Brent crude surged past $120 a barrel and the IEA declared the “greatest global energy security challenge in history,” China found itself in a position no other major power occupied: simultaneously a victim of the crisis, a would-be mediator and a quiet beneficiary. The question is no longer whether China has weathered the storm. The question is what it intends to do with the shelter it has built.

The same newspaper highlights: “A decade ago, China was the world’s biggest market for internal combustion engine cars. Today, it is the top market for electric vehicles.” Nevertheless, it is true that China still imports around 50% of its oil through the Strait. It was able to withstand such an unprecedented crisis by building solid lines of defense, both immediately after the blockade and in the years before it.

As soon as the war started, China protected its domestic market: the government banned exports of diesel, petrol and jet fuel, keeping supply at home; it froze retail fuel prices to prevent panic; and it told state oil companies to draw from commercial reserves instead of selling them. Similar measures were taken for resources such as helium, urea solution, aluminum and many others. As Xi Jinping said, “China is accelerating its shift to wind, solar, hydropower and nuclear energy.”

The war in Iran was not a reason for alarm, but a reason to move faster. The country’s new Five-Year Plan, which was already betting heavily on green energy, suddenly had the wind behind it. Indeed, the war in Iran pushed global investors to buy shares in Chinese solar companies, betting that the oil shock would make the whole world want what China was already selling.

The second line of defense was built over time: China’s oil reserves hold 1.4 billion barrels of oil. For years, China has been buying Iranian crude at a steep discount, quietly and consistently, even under US sanctions. By 2025, Beijing was absorbing over 80 percent of everything Iran shipped, around 1.4 million barrels a day. Of course, Iran now has much bigger problems, but since the war began, Chinese state refiners have not stopped. They have quietly explored new purchase agreements, taken advantage of informal US waivers and kept the supply flowing. In practice, China was not only cushioning itself from the crisis; it was also bankrolling the Iranian wartime economy.

The third wall was built by buying Russian gas and oil, sometimes discounted and sometimes not, thereby accepting a significant risk: relying heavily on the Kremlin. Over the past five years, China has secured its gas supply thanks to Russian pipelines, which bypass every sea route that could be blocked. The Power of Siberia 1 pipeline already delivers tens of billions of cubic meters a year, and if Power of Siberia 2 is ever built, Russia could cover a significant share of China’s entire gas demand without a single tanker crossing a strait. It is a strategist’s dream: energy that no blockade can stop. Yet leaning on Russia this heavily contradicts China’s own stated goal of diversification. This dependence also means that, if the relationship with Moscow ever sours, China could face the same kind of shock it is currently avoiding.

Even considering all of this, China is not sailing through unharmed. The war arrived at precisely the wrong time: the country was already dealing with a sluggish property sector, weak consumer spending, deflation and high youth unemployment. Then, in March, export growth, which had been booming at over 20%, collapsed to -25% compared with 2025, as disrupted shipping routes drained demand. Analysts at the Bruegel Institute noted that, while China absorbs oil inflation differently from Western economies, the squeeze on Chinese corporate margins is real and growing, threatening jobs in an economy that cannot afford to lose them.

China’s Q1 GDP grew by a better-than-expected 5%, but economists at Capital Economics warned that the economy has become dangerously reliant on exports, the very thing the war is now undermining. Airlines are grounding flights, factories are paying more for inputs, and the government’s worst fear of “bad inflation” driven by costs rather than demand is starting to look less hypothetical.

This is why China has been loudly, almost urgently, calling for a ceasefire. In March, the Foreign Ministry warned that a prolonged war would have serious economic consequences and positioned Beijing as the natural mediator. An end to the conflict would bring oil prices down, reopen global trade flows, restore Chinese export growth and, crucially, allow Beijing to step back from its awkward role as Iran’s chief economic lifeline. For all its resilience, China needs this war to end, and it knows it.

Written by Edoardo Blasco Sezanne