China’s Strategic Interest in Promoting Propaganda About the U.S.-Iran Conflict

China, one of the world’s more repressive regimes, is seizing on the Iran conflict to condemn the United States. The goal is to highlight or invent U.S. shortcomings while promoting Beijing as a responsible partner dedicated to world peace. The psyop is targeted at the Global South, where China hopes to build its support base for the global competition for domination.

The messaging also works well with American liberals who are looking for any opportunity to oppose President Trump and to protest. People who would not last two seconds in Iran are now protesting in favor of a regime that would have them killed. China is behind much of the messaging that motivates them.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson declared that the U.S.-Israeli strikes “have no UN Security Council authorization and violate international law.” Wang Yi repeated this position at the NPC press conference, adding that “plotting a ‘colour’ revolution or seeking government change will find no popular support,” and positioned Beijing as a neutral party, stating that “China’s attitude on this issue is objective and impartial.”

Xinhua formalized the line further, warning that “major countries should not make use of their military advantages to arbitrarily attack other countries,” arguing that attempts to impose government change produce “not stability but deepened resentment and protracted turmoil,” and that “if such aggressive logic were to be tolerated, any nation at odds with the United States could find itself facing a similar threat.”

Xinhua linked the Iran operation to the January 2026 capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, calling it “the second time in such a short span that Washington has taken extreme military action against the leader of a sovereign state.” Chinese analysts characterized the war as driven by ambitions to seize oil reserves or as a domestic distraction for Trump. Global Times called the killing of Khamenei “a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty and security” that “tramples on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.”

In addition to pushing its anti-U.S. rhetoric, Chinese state media reposted content produced by the Iranian regime. For example, the Iranian Embassy on Weibo mocked Voice of America, and Chinese state outlets repeated the embassy’s claims as diplomatic statements. Furthermore, Beijing’s various mouthpieces amplified Iranian claims without independent verification, including an image shared by Iran’s foreign minister purportedly showing graves being dug for more than 160 girls killed in a school bombing.

AI-generated videos of U.S. ships going up in flames, U.S. planes crashing, and widespread damage in Israel are all emanating from Iran but are being promoted by the CCP’s online networks of state media and paid social media accounts.

China’s state CCTV correspondent Liang Hui filed ground reports from Tel Aviv showcasing Iranian missile strike damage on Israeli targets, with footage accumulating roughly 39 million reads on Weibo. Ironically, a correspondent stationed in Tel Aviv would not have a better view, or any view, of the damage done in Israel. But the fact that he is “on the ground” adds undeserved credibility to his reporting.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies described the structure as a division of labor: Iran produces deepfakes and disinformation, Russia launders it through bot networks, and China amplifies it through state media while allowing it to circulate domestically where U.S. counter-messaging cannot reach.

In this particular propaganda campaign, Beijing’s role is not primarily fabrication but permissive amplification, suppressing pro-U.S. content while allowing anti-U.S. Iranian content to trend on domestic platforms.

Experts note that disinformation has evolved beyond obvious deepfakes to include “shallowfakes,” real images slightly altered or presented out of context, making false content harder to detect and more likely to reinforce existing biases.

The information operation extended inside the United States. Nonprofits funded by Neville Roy Singham, a tech executive with documented CCP alignment, mobilized protests in Times Square on February 28.

The People’s Forum issued an emergency call to action ten minutes after Trump announced the strikes, using messaging that mirrored a CCP video released before the attacks. China’s Foreign Ministry had issued its own statement calling for an end to the strikes by 9:09 a.m. that morning, its language aligned with that of the U.S.-based protest groups.

In addition to attempting to seize on the moment to improve its global soft power, China also has a financial motive for keeping the Iranian regime alive. Iran’s collapse carries economic and strategic costs for Beijing across several dimensions. China has invested over $100 billion in energy and infrastructure projects in Iran, which was China’s third-largest supplier of crude oil.

The conflict raises China’s energy import costs and ends a closed-loop arrangement in which Iranian oil funded Chinese state-backed infrastructure through non-dollar settlements and barter systems designed to bypass U.S. sanctions. The strikes also fracture China’s Belt and Road Initiative westward expansion and collapse its defense export market in the region.

Strategically, Iran served as a node in China’s diversion strategy, supporting adversaries of the United States to draw American resources away from the Indo-Pacific and as a key link connecting the CCP, Russia, and North Korea into a coordinated network. Its removal triggers further unraveling.

Venezuela has been weakened, Cuba is showing signs of accommodation with the West, and Beijing’s junior partners are being stripped away, leaving it isolated alongside Moscow and Pyongyang. The Brookings Institution noted that what China’s leaders would not tolerate is any attempt to use events in Iran to encourage similar unrest domestically, with top officials reportedly scrambling to assess party stability in the wake of the strikes and repeatedly being directed to study lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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