For weeks, even as protests rocked the streets of Iran with Donald Trump’s constant military threats, the prevailing narrative from Chinese scholarship was one of endurance; Tehran would not break as easily as the world imagined.
That prediction held firm even as the White House signaled a retreat from direct military strikes earlier this month.
But for the Islamic Republic, the absence of American missiles does not mean the danger has passed. China’s academia also believes that even with resilience, the Islamic regime’s challenges are far from over. It is not from the outside, but inside – the people’s anger and disappointment over the economy.
A Resilient Regime
“Will Iran’s current unrest lead to regime change? That outcome appears distant at present,” said Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of state-owned newspaper Global Times, one of China’s most inflammatory opinion leaders.
He highlighted two decisive factors, first, the Iranian public’s profound religious devotion despite growing distrust of the political establishment. Second, a pervasive anti-American sentiment that does not necessarily translate into support for the government in Tehran, and vice versa.
“Iran’s regime has endured prolonged sanctions and pressure, developing specialized expertise in navigating extreme challenges,” he wrote in an opinion piece on WeChat earlier this month.
This opinion was echoed by another prominent Chinese scholar in the Middle East, Jin Liangxiang, who told Chinese state-affiliated news website ThePaper.cn, that the commitment of Iran’s privileged elite – especially the military – to upholding the underlying system of theocracy has been significantly underestimated.
Jin, who is with Shanghai Institute of International Studies, also mentioned the quick and smooth power transition when the late former President Ebrahim Raisi was killed, saying that the regime has established an efficient system of power succession under decades of pressures.
Another leading Chinese Middle East scholar, Fan Hongda, pointed to an additional external factor: the United States and Israel may not share the same vision for what Iran should look like after regime change.
“The Trump administration would prefer Iran to become, at best, a partner — or at least not an ally of its rivals — while remaining a stable state; Israel, by contrast, would rather see a severely weakened, even fragmented Iran that no longer poses a security threat. An outcome may not necessarily align with U.S. interests,” Fan, from Shaoxing University, said.
Challenge Ahead
However, even with regime change being a hard task, Tehran is far from a stabilized government. And that challenge is not from the outside, but inside.
The Islamic regime is no stranger to protests that directly challenge Tehran’s legitimacy. The latest wave has been largely fueled by the country’s collapsing economy, while in 2022 an even more violent uprising erupted after the enforcement of strict hijab rules by the morality police led to the death of a young woman.
Yet Chinese scholars’ criticism largely targeted Iran’s economy, other than its authoritarian system.
Hu, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, said that even Iranians devoutly believe in Islam, “yet more pressing than ideology is the need for people to make ends meet. Iran’s problem in recent years is that life has grown increasingly difficult for many.”
Jin agreed, the professor from Shanghai said with the extreme economic and livelihood difficulties caused by sanctions, “even the strongest resilience will be unable to withstand such severe challenges.”
Oil Caution
China International Capital Corporation Limited, the state-owned top investment bank in the country, wrote in a report that China needs to be very cautious about oil if Iran sees any potential shakings.
China is widely believed to be the largest buyer of Iranian oil, despite the absence of any official trade due to U.S. sanctions. Intelligence assessments and shipping data suggest that much of this trade is conducted through so-called “shadow fleet” tankers, often sailing under third-country flags and obscuring their origins through ship-to-ship transfers and falsified documentation.
“Oil exported through gray channels is estimated to account for roughly 2% of the global supply – demand balance. If developments in Iran were to trigger a large-scale supply disruption, the current overhang in the crude market would need to be reassessed,” added the report.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? China and Iran have drawn closer in recent years, driven in part by their shared tensions with the United States. Despite their many differences, both are non-democratic systems that place a premium on regime stability. As a result, any shift in Tehran’s political trajectory is likely to attract close attention in Beijing. How China views Iran’s future is therefore tied not only to its strategic interests in the Middle East, but also to broader reflections on governance and internal stability at home.
