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Japan, India, Australia and others have all jumped on board to contain China. Consequently, despite becoming the largest navy in the world in terms of numbers , China is far from ruling the high seas and its navy remains tied down in East Asia. Until this changes, China cannot recast its attention elsewhere.

Second, recent developments prove that China is not as impartial as it claims. Despite the atrocities Hamas committed against civilians on October 7 last year, China has danced around condemning Hamas, let alone recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization.

To this day, China has refrained from singling out Hamas for criticism. Comments such as“China strongly condemns acts of violence against civilians” criticize not only Hamas but also Israel for inflicting collateral damage on civilians in Gaza.

Given that Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is not exactly welcomed with open arms by Arab countries. China's reluctance to single out Hamas for criticism is puzzling.

It could mean one of two things: China is unwilling to draw the ire of Arab countries and will leave nothing up to chance, or China is not aware that Hamas is unpopular not only in the Arab world but also in Gaza, where they ruled before the war.

Whatever the reason, at the end of the day, China's silence following the October 7 attack has irked Israel to no end, causing Sino-Israeli relations to plummet to what some see as an all-time low.

It does not appear that China is deliberately trying to anger Israel, as it has mainly followed the usual script , calling for all sides to exercise restraint and an end to the violence and resumption of talks based on the two-state solution. This suggests that China believes it is performing an astute balancing act.

However, when China began directly calling out Israel for overacting in Gaza, while staying mum about the brutality Hamas has committed, never mentioning Hamas by name in connection to the crime , it became clear that China is no longer neutral.

Ever since Donald Trump first took office, the US has been trying to coax countries to distance themselves from China. But after it became clear that most of the Global South has turned against Israel , and that the US will continue pledging“ironclad support” for it amid the Gaza war controversy, China saw an opportunity to turn the tables on the US.

In the past, China prioritized profiting from Middle East conflicts, going as far as selling arms to both sides of a war , as was the case during the Iran-Iraq War.

This time, China believes that it will gain more by picking a side, namely by jumping on the bandwagon with the Global South. Hence, China has been using the opportunity to criticize the US for its hypocrisy to undermine the US's global image.