China Needs a New Approach in Syria

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: China considers its approach after the collapse of Syria’s government, Chinese officials watch South Korea’s political crisis cautiously and quietly, and TikTok loses an appeal against a U.S. law that could result in a ban of the app.

China Reacts to Assad’s Fall in Syria

After the rapid collapse of the Syrian government on Sunday, China is likely to reflect on its losing bet on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But when the dust clears, new leaders in Damascus may be looking for reliable allies.

China has been aligned with Assad since Syria’s civil war began in 2011—but largely through its close ties to Russia and Iran, which backed the Syrian leader. At the United Nations, Beijing has often voted in lockstep with Moscow, blocking condemnations of Assad as well as cross-border aid. China significantly reduced its presence in Syria amid the conflict, though it kept investing in the country.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Assad in Hangzhou ahead of the Asian Games last year. At the time, China believed that the Syrian government was nearing a clear victory in the civil war. The two countries elevated their ties to a “strategic partnership,” but further investment was slow to come. (Syria joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2022, but it has not hosted a single project.)

Like the rest of the world, China was caught off guard by the speed of the rebel advance in Syria since late last month, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Last week, Chinese experts on the Middle East were still predicting a long, drawn-out war in Syria—as the ChinaMed Project has usefully covered.

Chinese discourse on the Syrian civil war was previously somewhat triumphalist. Many analysts suggested that Beijing’s support for Assad was justified by his regime’s seeming victory, and there was also praise for the “tide of reconciliation”—a favorite term of Chinese state media—that supposedly flooded the Middle East in the aftermath of China’s successful negotiation of Saudi-Iranian rapprochement last year.

The experts and officials involved will now look for an explanation for the hollowness of Assad’s regime and the success of the rebels. There is real expertise among Chinese academics on the Middle East, but there is also a tendency among Chinese officials to jump to conclusions, such as blaming the CIA for so-called color revolutions.

One immediate concern will be the safety of Chinese nationals in Syria, whom Beijing is already encouraging to leave the country. It’s not clear how many Chinese citizens are in Syria, given the cautious approach to investment there.

In 2011, China evacuated 35,000 of its citizens from Libya amid conflict there. A similar operation in Syria is possible—but it is unlikely unless the situation deteriorates rapidly or Xi decides that it could offer a propaganda opportunity. (Numerous Chinese movies glorifying the military have focused on the Libyan operation, most notoriously the massive hit Wolf Warrior 2.)

Beijing’s other big concern will be the presence of Uyghur fighters among rebel forces in Syria. Estimates of their numbers range from the hundreds to the thousands. China will prioritize putting pressure on Syria’s new rulers to exclude these fighters from any role in government and ideally to deport them to China. That may be tricky, since the Uyghur militants have a working relationship with HTS.

Yet any new leadership in Damascus will also probably be keen to build a relationship with Beijing. Syria has lost 85 percent of its GDP over the course of the war. A first step to solidifying ties may be protecting Chinese assets; it is possible the Uyghur fighters may end up as sacrificial pawns.

Meanwhile, Chinese outreach to HTS will probably pass through Turkey, which has considerable ties with the militant group. But Beijing is ideologically flexible enough to accommodate almost any government that emerges from the ashes in Damascus.

What We’re Following

South Korea crisis. Despite the chaos in Syria, Chinese leaders may be paying just as much attention to dramatic events closer to home: South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol—sometimes seen as a China hawk—appears to be on the way out after his farcical and rapidly lifted declaration of martial law last week.

Yoon survived an impeachment vote in the National Assembly over the weekend, but his own party leader has called for the president’s resignation. China has remained very quiet on the issue, sticking to a “no comment on the internal affairs of other countries” position when asked; Chinese state media coverage has been relatively neutral.

That may be because Chinese officials are understandably uncertain about what comes next in South Korea but also because Yoon was not the worst possible option for China. Despite the work he did to build up relations with the United States, which made him a favorite in Washington, Yoon could be surprisingly diplomatic when dealing with Beijing.

The South Korean public has turned sharply against China since Beijing’s bullying over Seoul’s deployment of a U.S. high-altitude missile defense system. But Yoon was willing to reach out to his foreign opponents, meeting with Xi as recently as November. If reports that Yoon was willing to risk war with North Korea to stay in power proves true, however, Beijing may be especially glad to see him leave.

Deflation fears. Worrying data about inflation in China—or rather, the lack of it—has shaken Asian markets. The Chinese consumer price index remains on the edge of deflation, and factory prices are also caught in a deflationary cycle. With manufacturers under pressure from overproduction and price wars over electric vehicles and e-commerce, this trend has continued for more than two years.

The Chinese government has promised a “moderately loose” monetary policy after a top economic meeting this week, using language last seen in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008-09. References to “extraordinary countercyclical measures” might mean that Xi is at last ready to let stimulus rip in 2025.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• How the World Got Syria Wrong by Charles Lister
• The Battle for Ukraine Is a War of Demography by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes
• Assad Has Fallen. What’s Next for Syria and the Middle East? by Amy Mackinnon and John Haltiwanger

Tech and Business

TikTok’s clock winds down. Last week, TikTok lost a key appeal against the U.S. law passed in April that requires parent company ByteDance to sell the social media app to a U.S. partner by Jan. 19, 2025, or face a ban in the United States. A frenetic public relations campaign by TikTok in March largely backfired, instead convincing U.S. lawmakers that the app had real power to influence opinion on China’s behalf.

Though ByteDance has no power to resist the Chinese state, evidence that Beijing has tried to use TikTok for influence efforts is thin, as the court noted, although academic studies have shown some bias toward Chinese government views on the app. TikTok is now trying a more nuanced approach, arguing that U.S. small businesses would lose $1.3 billion in just the first month of a ban.

But the real target of TikTok’s lobbying is U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who abruptly reversed his position on the ban—which his own administration tried to impose—after lobbying from Republican donor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass. The U.S. law takes effect the day before Trump’s inauguration, but he has some options, such as pressuring the Justice Department not to enforce the ban.

Given Trump’s image of himself as a dealmaker, a more likely scenario may be for him to find a buyer that is relatively acceptable to ByteDance.

Nvidia investigation. China is sharpening its weapons for an upcoming clash with the United States over tariffs and sanctions, starting with a just announced antitrust investigation into U.S. chip giant Nvidia. However, Nvidia and other semiconductor manufacturers have generally lobbied against chip sanctions in Washington, making them potentially useful for Beijing.

China seems to have decided to try to push Nvidia’s business to domestic giants such as Huawei instead. But U.S. manufacturers still have a technological advantage over China when it comes to high-grade chips. A renewed push by Trump’s Silicon Valley consiglieres is also likely drive up demand for high-end chips, which are used for crypto mining.

Meanwhile, Beijing is cutting off drone components and trying to strangle U.S. supply chains. The U.S.-China tech conflict is already getting heated; depending on Trump’s actions when he takes office, it could get white-hot. Between tariffs, sanctions, and demand, electronics prices may soar dramatically next year.