At the US-China summit in a few weeks, Beijing will see a United States with significantly depleted precision munitions stockpiles, strained alliances in the Indo-Pacific, and dependence on Chinese supply chains to rearm. It will assess that its own economy, while not unscathed by the oil shock, has weathered the crisis better than most. It will calculate that the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz will hurt Trump more than it hurts Xi. Meanwhile, it will see that some of America’s most important Pacific allies are economically strained and, increasingly, politically estranged.

The Iran war will eventually end. The structural advantages it has quietly handed to Beijing — in energy resilience, in alliance dynamics, in the munitions balance, in supply chain leverage, and in the trade and technology concessions being consolidated at the summit table — are likely to prove more durable.