🇨🇳🇺🇸 Everyone assumes Beijing is glued to America's war in the Gulf... but the view from inside Shanghai is far more unsettling: China isn't even watching
The war's supposed biggest winner can't be bothered to check the score.
Peter Alexander has run Z-Ben Advisors from Shanghai for 30 years, and his report from the ground cuts against every Beltway assumption: nobody in Beijing is strategizing around the Gulf.
They're just getting on with it.
The receipts are specific.
China's central bank just issued its own five-year plan, something it almost never does.
The state blueprint he says Washington should actually read covers six networks: the grid, 6G, data centers, logistics.
Last time everyone ignored a Chinese blueprint, it was the 2015 manufacturing plan, and by the time Washington noticed, it had already worked.
Then he demolishes the theory that Beijing cut oil imports as a favor to Trump. No bargain existed.
China bought heavy under $60, stepped back when war prices spiked, and walked right back in on July's dip. Price, not politics.
His warning for what comes after the war is the sharpest part.
He watched Chinese petroleum engineers arrive in Iraq during the surge, watched Beijing forgive Saddam's debts, then build a closed loop of Chinese loans, Chinese banks, and Chinese builders until, in his words, "China dominates the Iraqi oil complex."
If Tehran's government survives this war, he expects that model to move next door, expanded.
And Taiwan? No invasion required.
He walks through the Hong Kong playbook and explains why patience IS the entire strategy.
@WeTheBrandon
