As the geopolitical conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate, the consequences of the Chinese Communist Party’s covert support for extremist forces in international politics are accelerating the backlash against China’s private trade sector. In recent days, several Chinese foreign trade practitioners have reflected to Epoch Times that their export goods have been temporarily unloaded by carriers and forcibly rerouted. The enormous costs of rerouting and the risks of goods being lost are all borne by the shippers, further burdening China’s struggling small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises.
According to sources in Beijing’s foreign trade circle, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and senior economic officials have been in frequent contact with Iran recently, trying to resolve the issue of Chinese cargo ships stranded. However, the so-called “strategic dialogue” has yet to yield any substantial progress.
Insiders revealed, “Iran is giving no face at all, their attitude is very indifferent, just letting the Chinese side ‘wait patiently.’ Over a dozen days have passed, the waterway is still blocked with no progress whatsoever. This once again shows that the Chinese Communist Party, always fiddling around outside, cannot even protect the lifeline of its own businesspeople at critical moments, it’s all empty talk.”
On March 21, a woman engaged in foreign trade business in Shenzhen posted a distress call on social media. Two containers sent from Shenzhen port to Kuwait in early March were offloaded by carriers to an Indian port without notice. The woman anxiously expressed in a video, “The shipping company didn’t even inform us. By the time we traced the cargo, it was already in India! Now they are demanding that if we want to reroute to the destination, we must pay an additional $4,500 per container.”
Almost in tears, she said, “We are just a small company trying to earn some hard-earned money, we simply cannot bear such sudden risks. It’s as if all the risks of war and shipping costs are now all on the heads of us foreign trade workers.”
The Chinese Communist Party, claiming to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran, appears powerless in the face of the shipping chaos sparked by the escalating situation in the Middle East. In response to this, a scholar from Beijing who follows the situation between the Chinese Communist Party and Iran, speaking under the pseudonym Zhou Zhou, pointed out in an interview that this seemingly ordinary commercial dispute reflects the devastating blow of the Chinese Communist Party’s geopolitical strategy on private trade.
Zhou analyzed, “The Chinese Communist Party has long pursued the so-called ‘strategic partner’ policy in the Middle East, covertly supporting forces like Iran as a bargaining chip in the game against the West. However, the consequences of this high-level political maneuvering are often borne by the bottom-tier foreign trade merchants. Due to the ambiguous relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and ‘(evil) axis countries’, ships carrying Chinese goods in sensitive waters face higher security risks and insurance rates.”
He further remarked, “Some international shipping giants, to avoid sanction risks or high insurance premiums, often prioritize sacrificing weaker bargaining power Chinese small traders. For shipping companies, dropping off Chinese goods destined for sensitive regions costs much less than the risk of the entire ship being detained or attacked. While the Chinese Communist Party incites trouble internationally, it has never provided diplomatic support for private trade, and the containers of Chinese merchants have become unclaimed ‘political orphans’ in turmoil.”
Mr. Liu, a foreign trade blogger from Zhejiang, lamented during an interview, “Doing foreign trade now not only requires guarding against ‘external dangers,’ but also ‘internal worries.’ He added, “The domestic economy is deteriorating, and the sea routes are blocked. Official media keeps talking about ‘diplomacy of a great power,’ but in reality, it is us, the grassroots exporters, who are footing the bill for these grand narratives.”
On social media platform X, netizens commented, “The Chinese Communist Party supports rogue regimes internationally, and when the Middle East is in chaos, it’s always the small business owners engaged in practical industries who suffer.” Some mainland Chinese netizens stated, “The risks all accumulate at the end of the chain, the current policy direction completely disregards people’s livelihoods, and foreign trade is becoming more and more like playing Russian roulette.”
Observers point out that this reflects the deep-rooted flaws in China’s trade system under the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. As the international community intensifies its isolation of the Chinese Communist Party and its allies, the survival space for Chinese private enterprises devoid of legal protection will be further compressed, turning the ‘going global dream’ of millions of foreign trade workers into an increasingly unfathomable nightmare.