With US in a quagmire, China gains a strategic upper hand

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a high-stakes engagement in Beijing. While no one was expecting too much congeniality from this summit, the overall optics were grand, and symbolism was impossible to miss. Amid ceremonial welcomes, military bands, and carefully choreographed optics, the world’s two most powerful leaders sat across each other at a moment of extraordinary geopolitical volatility.

The Iran war has strategically overextended Washington, while Beijing has quietly accumulated leverage over oil flows, diplomacy, supply chains, and even America’s allies’ confidence in the US. The Strait of Hormuz continues to dominate strategic calculations. Taiwan looms in the background. And for the first time in years, Washington appears to be entering talks with Beijing not from overwhelming confidence, but from strategic exhaustion.

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For years, American foreign policy thinkers framed China as the revisionist power attempting to challenge a stable US-led order. But wars have a habit of redistributing leverage in unexpected ways. The ongoing Iran conflict may not have made China militarily stronger overnight, but it has unquestionably expanded Beijing’s geopolitical room for manoeuvre.

US Bleeds By Staying In the Silt

There is no incentive for Washington to prolong the Iran conflict. What makes this more interesting from a strategy point of view is that both Tehran and Beijing are cognisant of this fact and, therefore, their leverages.

Iran’s military infrastructure has suffered severe damage, but Tehran continues projecting the war as an American failure to achieve its core objectives. In a particularly revealing statement, Iranian Army spokesperson Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia argued:

"The enemy (US) did not achieve any of their pre-determined objectives; they were defeated in this war. Why? Because fundamentally modern wars are analysed based on the degree of achievement of objectives. Which side in the war was victorious and which side was defeated — although now in many places it is also analysed relatively, and perhaps one cannot speak absolutely — but whether absolutely or relatively, if we examine it, considering that the enemy did not reach any of its pre-determined objectives, it faced decisive defeat and failure."

It’s worth noting that America’s domestic politics also echoes similar views. Trump is politically weakened inside the US, and that plays out heavily in his China engagement. Back home, the Iran war is increasingly becoming a source of domestic strain for the White House. According to Pentagon estimates, the conflict has already cost the US nearly $29 billion, a figure that continues to rise with every additional deployment, missile interception, naval operation, and logistical expansion across the Middle East. Congress has spent weeks questioning Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon officials over the administration’s strategy, financial costs, endgame, and even the constitutional legitimacy of the conflict itself. Lawmakers demanded clarity on what exactly constitutes “victory” in Iran, especially as hostilities continue and Iran retains most of its ballistic missile combat capabilities, despite repeated claims that the conflict is under control.

The US entered the Iran war believing that limited military superiority could produce strategic deterrence. Instead, the US now finds itself trapped in a conflict it has no clear exit strategy for, one that is consuming its diplomatic bandwidth, military resources, energy security calculations, and political capital.

China Wins By Doing Less

The longer the Middle East crisis persists, the more Washington might require Beijing’s cooperation, whether on energy flows, de-escalation, supply chains, or diplomatic mediation. Reports already suggest Trump discussed Iran extensively with Xi, including the reopening of Hormuz and Chinese assurances regarding arms transfers to Tehran.

China’s foreign policy is rather peculiar. It seeks to project itself not as an indecisive revisionist state, but as a civilisational power resting on continuity. Trump, on the other hand, arrived in Beijing constrained by immediacy. Rising oil prices, battlefield uncertainty, military commitments, and midterm pressures all narrow Washington’s flexibility at the moment. Moreover, as a result of Trump’s isolationist policies, America’s adversarial engagements continue multiplying faster than its strategic capacity to manage them.

There’s a clear asymmetry at play. The US is paying the costs of precipitate attacks from its leadership. China is harvesting the benefits of ambiguity. In strategic terms, China is converting American action into Chinese opportunity. That may be the most efficient form of power accumulation.

The Taiwan Question

For years, Taiwan has represented the ultimate test of American credibility in Asia. US strategy in the Indo-Pacific rests heavily on the assumption that Washington will deter Chinese aggression through military backing and arms sales. After extensive discussions with Xi, Trump told reporters:

“He feels very strongly… I made no commitment either way. We’ll see what happens.”

Even more striking was Trump’s refusal to firmly reiterate support for Taiwan’s defense posture or continued arms sales. Asked specifically about weapons transfers to Taipei, Trump responded that he would “make a determination over the next fairly short period.”

Xi Jinping warned Trump that mishandling Taiwan could push the US-China relations toward “conflict” and described the Taiwan issue as the most sensitive question in bilateral relations. Traditionally, American presidents respond to such rhetoric with carefully calibrated reassurance toward Taipei and reaffirmation of deterrence commitments. Trump instead appeared unusually restrained, repeatedly emphasising that he “heard Xi out” and had “a lot of respect for him".

Deterrence depends not only on capability but also on perception. If Beijing concludes that the United States’ force projection is stretched thin, the strategic calculus around Taiwan changes in no time.

America’s Alliance Credibility Problem

Wars do not only consume weapons. They consume confidence. Across Asia, American allies are watching closely. And the message doesn’t go well across the spectrum. Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are asking difficult questions: if Washington is bogged down in the Middle East, how much military bandwidth remains for Indo-Pacific contingencies? And where does this leave the US in the event of a possible Taiwan scenario, especially when Rubio “hope(s) to convince them (China) to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away” from the Hormuz crisis?

Perhaps the most important change is psychological. The contradictions emerging from the Trump administration are difficult for allies to ignore. If anything, this summit has reaffirmed that wars have a way of exposing the limits of political stamina.

In many ways, the Iran war intersects with the larger great-power competition. China does not need an outright American collapse to advance its position. Structural shifts in international order rarely occur through singular moments of defeat. They emerge gradually when allies begin doubting the permanence, focus, or reliability of dominant powers, and that process may now be accelerating.

(Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)