Is China’s Foreign Policy ‘Good Enough’?
The following article is a chapter in a forthcoming book compilation published by Friends of Socialist China entitled "China Changes Everything"
The question in the title may seem hyperbolic, but it is one that comes up in one form or another across the U.S. political spectrum.
U.S. elites slam China’s foreign policy as riddled with “debt traps” for poorer countries in the Global South. The Western corporate media asserts that China is pursuing its own kind of empire and has a target on its own province of Taiwan as well as its neighbors in the South China Sea.
For the US ruling circle and its European vassals, China is an imperial competitor seeking to destroy the West’s “rules-based” international order (actually a euphemism for U.S. imperialism).
There are also plenty on the political “left”, even some communists, who view China in the exact same light. They consider China to be “state-capitalist” and therefore pursuing profits at the expense of humanity. And then there are those who, even if they rebuke this criticism and uphold China’s socialist foundation, are profoundly disappointed in China’s foreign policy. To these critics, China falls short of the global solidarity required in this historical moment and is not aggressive enough in the pursuit of justice.
The truth is, they’re all wrong. First, the debt trap narrative has been debunked again and again. John Hopkins University Political Scientist Deborah Bratigaum tore apart this myth as nothing more than a fabrication that obfuscates a grimmer reality: the primary holders of the Global South’s debt are private Western lenders, the IMF, and the World Bank.
Though there has been an uproar in Western media over a mythical Chinese seizure of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, 81 percent of Sri Lanka’s debt resides with U.S. and Western financial institutions as well as Japan and India. In November 2021, U.S. and Western media spread the fiction that China had seized Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport after the country was said to have defaulted on its loan. The story, it turns out, was entirely fictional. The Uganda Civil Authority Aviation Spokesperson himself felt compelled to dispel the lie on Twitter: “I wish to make it categorically clear that the allegation that Entebbe Airport has been given away for cash is false…there isn’t an ounce of truth in it.”
Beneath these fictions is an important fact: China’s cooperation with other countries is nothing at all like it’s been characterized in Western media. When U.S. and Western elites demonize China as an agent of “debt-trap diplomacy”, they not only project their own crimes onto China, but also smear a historic global project currently sending waves of fear down their spines.
This project is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which China launched in 2013. Its primary aim is to develop connectivity amongst participating countries, thereby cementing economic trade routes and cultural exchanges between them. As of 2023, the BRI included over 150 countries, over 200 BRI cooperation agreements, and over thirty international organizations. As of 2025, overall trade volume between BRI countries and China reached over 22 billion RMB, a 6.4 percent increase year-on-year.
Infrastructure development is the key to the Belt and Road Initiative. BRI cooperation has led to land-locked Laos launching its own high-speed railway in 2021 with Chinese assistance. This train travels up to 220 km/h between Laos’ southern and northern border, and from there to Kunming, one of China’s economic hub cities. In 2023, Indonesia’s Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail, built as a joint venture with Chinese railway companies, began commercial operations. From Pakistan’s first metro system to Greece’s most critical port, the BRI has brought modern infrastructure to nations that have been historically robbed by the cruel exploitation of Western colonialism, imperialism, and financial coercion.
It’s important to note that China’s foreign policy via the BRI is not “aid” per se. China frames all of its cooperation with partner countries as “win-win.” The Global South needs China’s expertise and resources to develop infrastructure, and the construction of this infrastructure has also created hundreds of thousands of jobs in BRI countries, from the thousands of projects underway or completed. Along with the infrastructure, these jobs lead to a higher standard of living, which allows countries around the world to purchase and obtain higher-value added goods from China. Through positive relations, China also gets to expand the network of connectivity worldwide, even to Europe and “high-income” countries. Everyone wins.
However, when Americans and Westerners think of foreign policy, they think of military interventionism. After all, the U.S. and its European vassals have known nothing but war. Trillions have been spent on U.S. and NATO wars since 1945, and trillions more will be spent in the coming years for as long as U.S. imperialism stands. But what about China?
Despite loud condemnations from the U.S.-led West that China is “aggressive” and even “imperial”, China’s foreign policy follows strict adherence to what the Communist Party of China (CPC) refers to as non-interference. This means that China seeks neither expansion nor dominance, but rather follows the principles of the UN Charter in all respects. China opposes unilateral sanctions, military or other forms of intervention in the affairs of other countries, and hasn’t fought a war since 1979. While China’s military possesses hypersonic missile capabilities, the largest navy on the planet, drone technology, electronic warfare, and much more, it only spends around 1.7 percent of its GDP on defense, or about half of the 3.5 percent of total GDP spent by the U.S.
Unlike the U.S., however, China faces very real threats to its sovereignty. The U.S. military-industrial complex has supplied arms and munitions to China’s province of Taiwan in the amount of tens of billions. In the last fifteen years, the U.S. has pivoted over half of its enormous military arsenal to the Asia Pacific region with the explicit intent to “contain” China. This includes moves such as sending anti-ship missiles to the Philippines, building an extensive network of around 400 bases from Japan to Singapore that completely surround China’s only coast, and creating alliances like “AUKUS” (Australia, the US, and UK) to prepare the way for war.
Under these conditions, China has every right under the UN Charter to use military force to defend itself. But that isn’t happening. Instead, China’s response to U.S. aggression has been characterized by a staunch commitment to a different set of principles all together: peace, win-win cooperation, and multipolarity.
This approach has earned China the status of top trading partner to over 145 countries. Rather than dictate conditions to other countries, China promotes a model of cooperation that focuses on mutual benefit. For example, China has made trade with fifty-three countries on the African continent completely tariff-free, while the Trump administration imposes widespread tariffs as a means to punish countries over dubious claims of “unfair” and “imbalanced” trade with the U.S. During the economic shockwaves of the COVID-19 pandemic, China cancelled loans and outstanding interest owed by 15 African countries.
China also acts as a proactive force for peace and multipolarity. China is the only nuclear-armed state to possess a no first use policy. Furthermore, China is second in direct funding and participation in international peacekeeping missions despite still being a developing country. Perhaps most significantly, China is one of the most important, if not the most important, economic and political anchor of an emerging alternative to U.S. hegemony. China’s direct leadership in BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and in other multilateral initiatives as a whole is indispensable to the development of what international relations experts are calling a multipolarity, in which a world no longer dominated by U.S. financial, military, and cultural imperialism is becoming more and more possible.
This just scratches the surface of China’s foreign policy and its significance. But is it good enough? After all, Gaza is being subjected to a brutal U.S.-Israeli genocide, which the world overwhelmingly opposes. Shouldn’t something be done? If China is the biggest economy in the Global South and anchor of the multipolar world, doesn’t it have a responsibility to come to Gaza’s aid?
Such a question assumes China is sitting back and watching Gaza burn. Nothing could be further from the truth. China has used its influence at the United Nations to not only condemn Israel’s brutality and call for an immediate ceasefire, but also to uphold the right of the Palestinian people to armed resistance. In 2024, China hosted a historic summit in Beijing that convened all major Palestinian political organizations with the aim of forging unity toward the establishment of a future Palestinian state. The summit led to the Beijing Declaration signed by all parties outlining the steps required to achieve this goal.
Additionally, China has virtually closed its market to Israeli blood diamonds in favor of its own cheaper lab-produced diamonds. Israel’s diamond industry contributes up to $1 billion annually to the military committing genocide Gaza. China-Israel relations have indeed reached an all-time low. Head of state visits have screeched to a halt, and the RAND Corporation has complained that China’s position on Gaza, Iran, and Yemen has angered both Israeli officials and Israeli society.
China is also a staunch supporter of Palestine’s most important allies in the region. Not only does China purchase over 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, It has also bolstered its defenses through provision of air defense and satellite technology instrumental in its successful counter to U.S. and Israeli aggression during the “Twelve-Day War” of June 2025. China brokered the normalization of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023, leading the latter to refuse to allow Israeli and U.S. fighter jets to refuel on its bases during their attacks on the former. China was deemed a non-participant in the Gaza genocide by Yemen’s Ansar Allah from the beginning of its blockade of the Red Sea in 2023, and Chinese ships have never been disallowed from using the key trade route.
Still, some in the West demand that China do more to tip the balance, such as cut all trading ties with Israel. These voices claim such an action would have no impact on China and send a stark message to the world that genocide will not be tolerated. This hypothesis, however, is fatally flawed.
First of all, the horrors in Gaza are not of China’s making. The U.S. accounts for 70 percent of Israel’s arms imports, and wields a political and diplomatic shield over Israel that is arguably more powerful than that provided to any of its other so-called “allies” around the world. The blame for Gaza’s plight rests at the feet of the U.S., the West, and of course, Israel. Moving attention away from this is as unhelpful as it is dangerous.
Makers of U.S. foreign policy have shown the world time and time again that they are willing to go to any length to protect what they see as their most important military asset in the region. Any unilateral action taken against Israel will be met with serious consequences. While the U.S. empire is in marked decline and unable to arrest the development of a rising China and Global South, it has proven more than capable of spreading chaos and instability. The U.S. and Israel would undoubtedly move to cut China off from the entire region if it were to carry out a boycott of Israel on its own, and the genocide would continue, but under even more hostile global conditions than currently exist. This isn’t to say that a boycott isn’t correct in principle, but to put the onus of responsibility for leading such a boycott on China, a developing country that is itself the target of U.S. sanctions, moves the goalposts away from the U.S. empire.
Foreign policy and international solidarity are determined by more than just the moral values nations and people hold in their heads and hearts. The complex relationship between the social system of a particular country and its material conditions—both domestically within it and internationally outside of it—ultimately determines the shape of its foreign policy at a particular moment in history. China, for example, possesses a shared history with Palestine as a target of imperial aggression, and has itself suffered the most brutal conditions of poverty, war and plunder from multiple foreign aggressors for more than a hundred years. China was thus one of the first countries in the world to recognize the nation of Palestine and its national liberation movement, the PLO, in 1965.
Yet China’s foreign policy in the current period is tasked with ensuring the development of the Global South while standing true to its commitments to international law. China has thus hewed to its policy of non-interference to complement the win-win cooperation mechanisms outlined in this chapter. From the Belt and Road Initiative to its key role in developing multilateral institutions such as BRICS, China is already playing an indispensable role in building a brighter future for the Global South. China doesn’t wage wars of aggression, commit genocide for the sake of expansionism, or seek hegemony of any kind. By committing itself to the core principles of international law such as respect for self-determination, and by developing win-win relations in all spheres, China provides an example to the entire world of what a future of global peace could look like.
This won’t satisfy everyone, especially those in the U.S. and the West feeling hopeless and powerless about the genocide in Gaza. Years of protest have not compelled the U.S. to pressure Israel to stop. Some in the West, under the weight of guilt or panic, might ask themselves, if China is a leader, why won’t it DO MORE?
Simply put, it’s the wrong question, and it’s one that is not being asked publicly by the forces of resistance leading the way in Gaza and beyond. There isn’t a single statement from the Palestinian resistance organizations or from the entire Axis of Resistance demanding that China do more. In fact, these forces are building closer ties to China with the aim of strengthening their stability and therefore their effectiveness in resisting imperialism and colonialism. China’s relations with Iran have grown tremendously, helping the biggest supporter of Palestine to survive and to even make military and industrial advances despite U.S. and EU sanctions.
From Gaza to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the crisis of U.S. imperialism is filling mass graves in an attempt to hold onto its hegemony. The suffering of the Palestinian people has sent shockwaves across the world and has led to a surge in support for the liberation of Palestine. It has also led some into the depths of despair as the alienation of capitalism in the terminal stage of imperialism heightens. And in the West, despair creates the conditions for U.S. elites and their lackeys to sow Cold War-like divisions, even within the Palestine solidarity movement.
Asking whether China’s foreign policy is “good enough” on Gaza falls into this trap when answered within a vacuum. It is clear that China is operating within the contradictions of a decaying U.S.-led unipolar order, and by doing so can offer many tangible benefits to humanity. The real question we in the West should be asking is, how can we collectively strengthen our movements to put real pressure on the root cause of the genocide in Gaza: the U.S. empire. Once we do, new and ample opportunities will emerge, to end not only the horrors in Gaza, but also the entire system of empire from which they sprang.