Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on China to support the U.S.-led international operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on May 4, 2026, and urged Beijing to stop blocking United Nations resolutions aimed at restoring freedom of navigation through the waterway that carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil. “I would urge the Chinese to join us in supporting this international operation,” Bessent said on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino. “There are things moving through the UN that China and Russia have blocked. So if they want to be good global citizens, join at the UN.”
Bessent’s remarks came less than two weeks before President Trump is scheduled to travel to Beijing for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 14-15 — a meeting originally planned for late March that was pushed back after the U.S. and Israel launched military strikes against Iran on February 28, 2026. The Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz closure, and China’s role in both the conflict’s diplomatic impasse and its economic consequences are now expected to dominate a summit that was originally focused primarily on trade.
China and Russia’s Veto: What Happened at the UN
The UN Security Council resolutions Bessent referenced were blocked on April 7, 2026, when China and Russia vetoed a Bahrain-led resolution aimed at securing freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. The vote was 11 in favor, two against — China and Russia — and two abstentions, as documented in the official UN Security Council press release. The resolution had already been significantly weakened in an attempt to secure a Chinese and Russian abstention rather than a veto — stripped of all references to “all necessary means” and offensive military action, revised to authorize only “all defensive means necessary,” and narrowed in scope to cover only the Strait of Hormuz rather than adjacent waters. Even that version was vetoed.
China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong said the draft “failed to capture the root causes and the full picture of the conflict in a comprehensive and balanced manner,” according to the Security Council meeting record. Russia’s Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the resolution was “unbalanced, inaccurate and confrontational” for framing Iran as the sole source of regional tensions while ignoring U.S. and Israeli military operations. Both countries have proposed an alternative resolution broadly calling for a cessation of hostilities and a return to diplomacy.
The U.S. response at the UN was sharp. As documented in the UN General Assembly debate record that followed the veto — triggered by a 2022 General Assembly procedure requiring every Security Council veto to produce a formal Assembly debate within 10 working days — the U.S. representative told the 193-member body that China and Russia “deliberately chose to turn a blind eye — and worse, to permit Iran’s attacks on its neighbours, its terror against its own people and its death grip that it’s attempting to place on the global economy.” He also stated that Beijing was “importing over 90 per cent of Iran’s illicit oil” — a figure that goes directly to Bessent’s point about China’s financial stake in keeping Iranian crude flowing.
China’s Economic Ties to Iran and the Strait
China’s reluctance to support the Hormuz resolution is inseparable from its energy relationship with Iran. According to the U.S. statement at the UN General Assembly veto debate, Beijing imports more than 90% of Iran’s illicit oil — making China the primary buyer keeping Iran’s sanctioned petroleum revenues flowing despite U.S. and EU restrictions. That relationship predates the current conflict: China has been Iran’s largest oil customer for years, consistently purchasing Iranian crude under arrangements that circumvent Western sanctions through opaque payment mechanisms, vessel transfers, and relabeling of cargo. Treasury Secretary Bessent’s Operation Economic Fury financial campaign has targeted that arrangement directly, sanctioning Chinese companies including Hengli Petrochemical — one of Iran’s largest customers — in April 2026.
At the same time, China is itself a major user of the Strait of Hormuz. The Bahrain foreign minister noted at the Security Council meeting that the strait serves as a transit route for approximately 38% of global crude oil, 29% of liquified petroleum gas, 19% of liquified natural gas, and 20% of refined petroleum products. China is among the world’s largest importers of all of those commodities. Its own energy security is directly threatened by a prolonged closure of the strait — a dynamic Bessent was explicitly invoking when he called on Beijing to “join us” in reopening it. The UN General Assembly debate recorded that oil prices had surged by more than 40% and spiked above $110 per barrel, with the IMF cutting its global growth outlook for 2026 and warning of recession risk.
The Beijing Summit: What Bessent Expects
When host Bill Hemmer noted that the summit was originally scheduled before the Iran war began, Bessent was measured about his expectations. “I think the expectation is it will be a chance for President Trump and Xi Jinping to exchange views in person,” he said. “The strength of the relationship is the relationship between the two leaders.” He cited a framework established at a summit in Busan, South Korea, in October 2025, where the two sides established a consensus — with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and Bessent tasked with implementing it on the economic side, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and China’s foreign secretary handling the political side. “I think we would push forward the consensus from Korea and also keep the relationship stable,” Bessent said.
That framework is being actively prepared. According to UPI, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held a video call with Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on May 1, described by Reuters as “candid and comprehensive,” with both sides raising concerns over trade restrictions and regulatory measures. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also spoke by phone with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 1, with Wang stating that “leader-level diplomacy has long served as a guide for U.S.-China relations.” The calls signaled that both governments are committed to holding the summit as scheduled on May 14-15, despite persistent tensions over trade, Taiwan, and the Iran conflict.
A Summit Reshaped by War
The Beijing summit was originally conceived primarily as a trade and economic engagement — the culmination of more than a year of tariff battles, six rounds of talks, and fragile truces between the world’s two largest economies. As documented in Foreign Policy’s analysis of five decades of U.S.-China summitry, U.S. Trade Representative Greer has signaled that Trump will seek “stability” rather than a reset — with discussions on rare earth supply and the outlines of a joint “Board of Trade” potentially on the table. But the Iran war has added an entirely new and urgent dimension. As the Eurasia Review noted, the summit’s postponement from March to May was itself a direct consequence of the conflict — and Trump is now expected to seek Beijing’s cooperation in pressing Tehran toward a ceasefire as part of the agenda.
China’s position heading into the summit reflects a carefully constructed posture of strategic ambiguity. Beijing has condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran as unlawful, blocked UN resolutions it characterized as biased, maintained its energy trade with Tehran, and simultaneously sought to position itself as a potential diplomatic intermediary. As analyzed by The Diplomat, China has been assembling what amounts to a coherent leverage strategy ahead of the summit — managing North Korea engagement, stabilizing economic relations with Washington, and presenting itself as indispensable to any durable resolution of the Middle East crisis, all without formally taking sides.
The Pressure Bessent Is Applying
Bessent’s public call for China to “join us” at the UN and support the international operation to reopen the Strait carries significant weight coming from the Treasury Secretary rather than a diplomatic spokesperson. Bessent has been the architect of the administration’s financial pressure campaign against Iran — Operation Economic Fury — which has explicitly targeted Chinese companies that buy Iranian oil. The April 24 sanctioning of Hengli Petrochemical, one of China’s largest petrochemical processors, was a direct message to Beijing that purchasing Iranian crude carries consequences, regardless of whether it is done through sanctioned channels. His Sunday Morning Futures remarks from May 3, the day before his America’s Newsroom appearance, had already described the Gulf states’ financial cooperation with Washington in freezing IRGC assets — cooperation driven, he argued, by Iran’s strategic miscalculation in attacking its own neighbors.
Bessent’s framing of China’s choice — “if they want to be good global citizens” — is a deliberate appeal to Beijing’s interest in its own international standing. China has been insisting throughout the conflict that it supports international law and freedom of navigation in principle. Bessent is pointing out the contradiction between that stated position and voting to block a UN resolution designed to restore exactly that. Whether that argument gains traction in Beijing — where the calculus also includes continued access to cheap Iranian oil, strategic solidarity with Russia, and the desire to avoid being seen as aligning with a U.S.-led military operation — will be one of the central tests of the May 14-15 summit.
What Both Sides Need From the Summit
For the Trump administration, the Beijing summit offers a chance to press China on both the Iran war and trade simultaneously — potentially using progress on one as leverage for the other. Trump has reportedly discussed the possibility of offering China tariff relief in exchange for cooperation on Iran, though no such deal has been confirmed. For Beijing, the summit offers an opportunity to stabilize a bilateral relationship that has been under severe strain from escalating tariffs — both nations raised levies beyond 100% on each other’s goods in 2025 — while avoiding any formal commitment to a U.S.-led military or diplomatic initiative against Iran that would damage its relationship with Tehran.
“The strength of the relationship is the relationship between the two leaders,” Bessent said — and both sides appear to agree on that point even as they disagree on nearly everything else the summit must address. In February, Xi told Trump in a phone call that he hoped 2026 would become a year of “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.” Whether that aspiration survives contact with the reality of Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and the continued flow of Chinese money into sanctioned Iranian oil will be determined, in large part, by what happens in Beijing on May 14 and 15.