The Chinese government was one of four nations on Wednesday to abstain from voting on the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution condemning the wanton attacks on Red Sea shipping perpetrated by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning was noncommittal on Thursday’s U.S.-British strikes against Houthi targets, saying only that China is “concerned about the escalating tension in the Red Sea, and calls on relevant parties to exercise calm and restraint to prevent the conflict from escalating.”
UNSC held an “emergency meeting” in early January that embarrassingly failed to produce any concrete action against the clear-cut violations of international law perpetrated by the Houthis and the menace they posed to civilian vessels in the Red Sea, which happens to be one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
The United States and 12 allied countries issued a statement outside of the United Nations demanding an immediate end to Red Sea piracy. The statement warned the Houthis would “bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways.”
The Houthis kept attacking ships, launching one of their largest drone and missile barrages to date on Tuesday, so on Wednesday, UNSC tried again. This time, the U.S. and Japan sponsored a resolution condemning more than two dozen Houthi attacks “in the strongest terms” that passed with a vote of 11-0.
UNSC has 15 members, so four of them abstained on Wednesday’s vote. Those four were Russia, China, Algeria, and Mozambique. Russia actively tried to sabotage the resolution by introducing a string of amendments to water it down, one of which said, “The escalation in Gaza is a main root cause of the current situation in the Red Sea,” but all of them were defeated.
China quietly refused to vote, explaining later that it wanted some of the amendments to pass and claiming the text as written was “ambiguous on several key issues,” as the state-run Global Times put it on Thursday.
Chinese ambassador to the U.N. Zhang Jun cited the Russian amendment that would have stipulated the resolution against the Houthis “should not be seen to create precedent or new norms of international law” as one that Beijing wanted to pass.
The Global Times quoted Chinese academics who said the odious Russian amendment that essentially blamed Israel for causing Red Sea piracy by fighting the Hamas terrorists in Gaza was also something China wanted to pass.
“Targeting Houthi militia without substantial efforts to de-escalate the Gaza war is like putting the cart before the horse,” said Shanghai International Studies University professor Liu Zhongmin.
The Global Times defensively quoted “analysts” who said it was “ridiculous” to claim that China is benefiting from Middle Eastern instability. This might have been an uneasy reference to reports that China is urging freight companies to consider its expensive and highly insecure cross-continent railroad network as an alternative to sending cargo ships around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
Bloomberg News reported on Thursday that at least five cargo ships passing through the Red Sea have broadcast signals claiming they had all-Chinese crews in the apparent hope that associating themselves with China would persuade the Houthis to leave them alone.
The Chinese themselves are apparently unsure this would work. On Monday, Israeli media reported that Chinese shipping giant Cosco had suspended shipping to Israel through the Red Sea. Cosco’s shares fell three percent on the Hong Kong index after the news.
The U.S. State Department noted in December that Houthi attacks “harm China” and invited the Chinese to play a “constructive role in trying to prevent those attacks from taking place,” but Beijing ignored the invitation.
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