Beijing shrugs at U.S. call for help protecting Red Sea shipping

The Chinese government appears to be brushing off Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s call for Beijing to assist an international coalition in protecting commercial shipping in the Red Sea from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militias.

Beijing signaled that it has no interest in joining the Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational force including Canada, the United Kingdom and Bahrain, in providing security for cargo ships under threat of Houthi attack.

“We believe relevant parties, especially major countries with influence, need to play a constructive and responsible role in keeping the shipping lanes safe in the Red Sea,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday in an indirect reference to U.S. military and diplomatic heft in the region.

Wang’s reference to “major countries with influence” reflects Beijing’s recognition that the U.S. and its allies and partners can muster, at speed, far greater naval power necessary for a seaborne shipping protection campaign than Beijing currently can. Wang didn’t address whether Beijing would use its close relationship with Iran, which provides arms and funding to the Houthis, to seek an end to those attacks.

The Houthi attacks will continue “whether a naval alliance is established or not," Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said on Tuesday, per Reuters. Up to 15 percent of global trade traverses the Red Sea and the Houthi attacks have prompted cargo vessel rerouting “adding weeks to the delivery of key goods and materials, including oil and gas,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Tuesday.

Blinken raised U.S. concerns about the attacks’ “unacceptable threat to maritime security and international law” in a phone call with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi earlier this month. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller re-upped the administration’s interest in Chinese assistance in policing the areas of the Red Sea where the Houthis have attacked cargo vessels in a press briefing on Tuesday. Houthi attacks on international shipping “Harm China… so yes, we would welcome China playing a constructive role in trying to prevent those attacks from taking place,” Miller told reporters on Tuesday.

The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Wang’s statement reflects Beijing’s wider passivity in addressing the crises that have engulfed the Middle East since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war which has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Following the Oct. 7 attack Beijing dispatched its special envoy to the Middle East, Zhai Jun, for a multi-country swing through the region aimed to “cool down the situation,” Chinese state media reported in October. Zhai led Beijing’s efforts in brokering a hostility-reduction agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March.

But Zhai’s diplomatic mission excluded outreach to both Israel and the Palestine Authority and consisted mainly of vague expressions of support for “political settlement” of long standing grievances underpinning the current violence.

David Satterfield, President Joe Biden’s Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues, said in October that that gap between rhetoric and action reflects Beijing’s sensitivity “to being compelled on any international issue to take a stand which could indicate, even obliquely, that China is supportive of ‘international interventions’ or applications of international law.”