In an effort to reassert geopolitical influence vis-à-vis China’s longstanding allies, the United States, under the Trump administration, conducted a military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and subsequently launched military operations against Iran, which have escalated into a wider conflict in the Gulf region. Why, then, has China refrained from offering direct military support to its close partners? The first thing that comes to mind is that China lacks both the inclination and the expeditionary military capacity to undertake such ventures, but this article shows it is also about political will – rooted in Beijing’s deep integration into global capitalism, its cautious adherence to non interference, which results in the absence of binding security commitments with these regimes.

Over the past two decades, several regimes positioned against Western dominance – Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and Russia – have endured in part through Chinese economic and diplomatic engagement. Beijing has become their key creditor, trading partner, and political interlocutor. This has led some observers to interpret China’s rise as the consolidation of an alternative bloc within the global order. However, while China’s support for anti-Western regimes is real, it is structurally constrained, often utilitarian and subordinated to Beijing’s broader integration within the existing international system. The very sovereignty-centred politics that attract these regimes to China simultaneously prevent Beijing from converting partnership into broader influence with durable political allegiance or security guarantees.

China’s foreign policy discourse invokes sovereignty, non-interference, and South-South cooperation. This rhetoric resonates strongly with regimes whose legitimacy is built on resistance to Western intervention. Infrastructure finance, commodity trade, and diplomatic coordination provide these states with alternatives to Western conditionality. Yet this alignment is not ideological in substance. Chinese engagement deepens when it serves clear strategic interests: securing energy supplies, accessing markets, gaining diplomatic leverage in multilateral forums, or expanding financial reach. The cases of Iran and Venezuela demonstrate that Chinese support is not unconditional solidarity but selective pragmatism. Beijing advances where returns are calculable and retreats where escalation risks systemic costs. All in all, China leverages on anti-Western discourse, but it does not bind itself to anti-Western confrontation.

The contradiction lies at the core of these relationships. The regimes most receptive to China define themselves through political and economic sovereignty. Venezuela’s politics is grounded in the state control over strategic resources, a model initiated by Hugo Chávez’s nationalisation of the oil industry in the mid-2000s. Likewise, Iran maintains tight control over key economic sectors, especially through the dominant role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in industries from energy to construction and telecommunications. These regimes welcome Chinese capital and diplomatic backing because it reduces isolation. They also see in China a developmental model that appears to reconcile state control with global integration. However, their elites derive legitimacy from resisting dependency. Consequently, while economic cooperation expands, such alignment remains guarded, preventing the emergence of hierarchical leadership from China. As such, China cannot easily become a hegemon to actors whose political identity rests on resisting hegemonic subordination. By doing so, China is compelled to continue defending the principles of sovereignty in a world where the US increasingly shows little regard for them.

These constraints also reflect China’s own positioning within the global system. It is true to say that Beijing benefits enormously from the existing economic order. Its rise has been facilitated (not obstructed) by the current architecture of globalisation and so far continues to benefit from free trade and economic integration. As Xi Jinping said at the APEC Summit in October 2025, “China’s door to the world will not close; it will only open wider… Beijing is always pursuing the basic state policy of opening up and has taken real steps to promote an open world economy”.

At the same time, China has established new institutions and initiatives that partially dilute Western dominance, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the New Development Bank (NDB). These platforms offer alternative forms of development finance that diverge from the conditionalities traditionally imposed by the IMF and World Bank, such as fiscal austerity and privatisation. They extend China’s influence through long-term development projects, often operating outside the US dollar system. Yet while these initiatives create leverage with the Global South, they do not fundamentally challenge the underlying principles of free trade and investment, which allows China to continue benefiting from economic integration with its closest partners.

This dual strategy reveals a central point: China seeks a greater voice in the current order, promoting new (often fairer) avenues for economic expansion, without rupture from current rules as of now. Supporting anti-Western regimes therefore remains bounded by Beijing’s unwillingness to incur the costs of direct systemic confrontation with the United States. While being the principal creditor and trading partner for countries like Venezuela and Iran, China stops short of security guarantees. Beijing avoids commitments that would require military intervention or decisive alignment in the event of direct confrontation with Washington.

The result is a structural paradox. China’s anti-Western rhetoric attracts regimes seeking autonomy from Western dominance. Yet the sovereignty logic underpinning these regimes blocks the formation of deeper hierarchical alignment. Simultaneously, China’s integration into the global economy discourages it from underwriting revisionist confrontation. China therefore occupies an intermediate position: more than a passive status quo power, but less than a revolutionary hegemon. It expands economic influence, builds institutional alternatives, and leverages geopolitical openings. But it does not construct a cohesive bloc capable of challenging the system at its core.

In a context of intensifying US-China rivalry, this limitation becomes more visible. As Washington demonstrates declining tolerance for adversarial regimes, and as geopolitical polarisation deepens, the space for sovereign anti-Western states narrows. Yet China is unlikely to assume the costs of fully protecting them.

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