Page 1 of 2 BOOK
REVIEW Close,
but not too close China
and Iran by John Garver
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Should
the much-prophesied US military attack on Iran
take place, what would China do? Would it buckle
under as in the cases of Serbia or Iraq, or would
there be a firmer response this time? Sinologist
John Garver's new book China and Iran
offers some clues, and their essence is that
Beijing may not stand in
the
way if Washington plans an invasion of Iran.
Despite the duo's salience in world energy
and nuclear politics, negligible research exists
on ties between China, the rising global power,
and Iran, the strongest state of the Persian Gulf.
Garver fills this void by analyzing the full
breadth of this intriguing relationship that has
withstood historical fluctuations.
Civilizational solidarity
constitutes the spirit of Sino-Iranian relations.
Shared emotional hurt at how these rich and proud
kingdoms were humiliated and stripped of their
high status by Western powers in the modern era
runs through official discourse
of the two countries. Diverse
Chinese and Iranian leaders have held that the
existing world order dominated by the West is
profoundly unjust and must be replaced.
From Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, and from
the shahs to the ayatollahs, a joint drive to
restore national greatness has motivated bilateral
ties. Sino-Iranian diplomatic narratives contend
that their two-millennia-old natural friendship
was "interrupted by imperialist sabotage and
disruption" and that the need is to "unite and
oppose hegemonism" (p 16).
Pragmatically,
each country recognizes that the other possesses
supreme power capabilities in its respective
region. China assessed Iran as valuable for
blocking Soviet "expansionism" in the 1970s and US
unipolarity in the 1990s with its ability to deny
superpower control over Persian Gulf oil. Iran
hopes Chinese power will be adequate to check, or
at least resist, future US aggression.
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's opening to
Beijing in 1969 was intended to counter Moscow's
closeness to Iran's arch-rival Iraq. He also
imagined that forging links with "Red China" would
demonstrate domestically that Iran had some
independence from the US. Simultaneously, Mao
accorded Iran prominence in his "United Front"
against Soviet "social imperialism".
Beijing's overtures to Iran also sought to
limit India's regional status and prevent further
unraveling of Pakistan after its breakup in 1971.
Pakistan, in fact, facilitated rapprochement and
normalization of relations between China and Iran
in the form of a convenient venue for talks.
Beijing committed a diplomatic blunder by
endorsing the shah to the very end of his regime.
It produced bitterness among the Islamic
revolutionary forces that took over Iran in 1979.
Calculations of expediency slowly brought the
country's new theocratic rulers and China's
post-Mao leaders back together.
The
ayatollahs were delighted that China's Muslim
minorities had religious freedom and succeeded in
gaining Chinese military assistance in their war
against Iraq. Worries of Soviet encirclement
worsened in Beijing in the 1980s, and Iran was as
attractive as earlier to break it. The political
climate had changed, but "the utility of an
'all-weather' partnership based on national
capabilities was constant" (p 63).
In
1982, China moved away from alignment with the
United States toward an "independent
foreign-policy line". This substantially enlarged
the areas of commonality between Beijing and
Tehran. However, there were limits to how far
China could go in supporting Iran against the US.
Beijing had broadly cooperative and
non-confrontational ties with Washington that
could not be jeopardized. In 1987, Beijing
insisted that Tehran not deploy Chinese-supplied
Silkworm missiles against US-escorted Gulf
commerce. It was a "frank but friendly
disagreement couched as divergent perspectives
among Third World brothers" (p 94).
By
1989, China was crucial to Iran's postwar
reconstruction and Tehran's most influential and
trusted friend. Western criticism and sanctions
against China after the Tiananmen Square massacre
forged even warmer Sino-Iranian cooperation for
promoting multipolarity. The two condemned US
president George H W Bush's "New World Order" and
opposed foreign military intervention to undo
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Yet Iran was a
card that had to be played very carefully against
Washington, as a strong US backlash could
undermine China's post-1978 economic development.
When Tehran invited Beijing to a "militant
struggle" against the US and Israel, the Chinese
parried and offered substantive benefits in other
areas.
Deteriorating US-China relations
over Taiwan and human rights caused Beijing's
partial disengagement from Tehran in 1997.
Tarnishing of China's international respectability
and image
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of the two countries. Diverse
Chinese and Iranian leaders have held that the
existing world order dominated by the West is
profoundly unjust and must be replaced.
