{"id":76556,"date":"2026-03-03T13:36:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/03\/trump-us-iran-middle-east-china"},"modified":"2026-03-03T13:36:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T04:36:38","slug":"trumps-show-of-force-in-the-middle-east-creates-a-weakness-china-can-exploit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76556","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s show of force in the Middle East creates a weakness China can exploit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Beijing can again leverage its critical minerals dominance over an increasingly busy US military, as Taiwan slides further down the White House list of priorities<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2026\/mar\/03\/us-israel-war-iran-live-updates-attacks-strikes-trump-netanyahu-lebanon-middle-east-latest-news\"><strong>US-Israel war on Iran \u2013 live updates<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As the US and Israel opened <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/02\/us-israel-war-on-iran-dramatically-expands-across-middle-east\">a new chapter of chaos in the Middle East<\/a>, China stands to benefit from a Washington establishment that does not have the political or physical resources to focus on Asia.<\/p>\n<p>Officially, China has condemned the attacks. Wang Yi, the foreign minister, called them \u201cunacceptable\u201d and called for a ceasefire, rhetoric that is typical of Beijing in response to Donald Trump\u2019s increasingly erratic foreign policy moves.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/03\/trump-us-iran-middle-east-china\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beijing can again leverage its critical minerals dominance over an increasingly busy US military, as Taiwan slides further down the White House list of prioritiesUS-Israel war on Iran \u2013 live updatesAs the US and Israel opened a new chapter of chaos in &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4154,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,415,74,45,47,3510,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-donald-trump","category-taiwan","category-us-foreign-policy","category-us-news","category-us-israel-war-on-iran","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4154"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76557,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76556\/revisions\/76557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}