In September 2019, China was reported to have signed an agreement with Iran to invest something in the region of US$400 billion in oil related industries and industrial infrastructure. In return, China would be able to buy discounted oil and related resources (using currencies other than the US Dollar), and Chinese firms would be given ‘first refusal’ to run existing or future contracts in all Iranian petrochemical projects without competition. As part of the deal, China was also reported as preparing to send 5,000 security personnel to Iran to protect its citizens and investments (Watkins, 2019). Three weeks later the US Department of State imposed sanctions on six Chinese companies and some of their executive officers for breaking US sanctions on transporting oil from Iran (Pompeo, 2019). The timing of the two announcements was probably coincidental. The sanctions applied to transactions that had occurred before the new deal was announced, so may well have been introduced in any case. But whether they were directly linked or not, these two stories combine to provide an example of one of the themes of the time that emerged as Chinese outward investment grew in the new millennium: the idea that China was using its financial power to get hold of strategic resources in places that others would not (or could not) go. In the process, so the argument went, China was propping up authoritarian states and undermining the attempts of others to promote the protection of human rights and to guarantee national, regional and even global security.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that high politics and strategic objectives loomed large in Chinese economic relations with Iran. Or at various times, with North Korea, Myanmar and Zimbabwe as well. But this doesn't mean that all Chinese overseas projects are driven by the same goals and delivered in the same ways. On the contrary, there is now a rather large body of research that shows how other actors and interests have driven relationships elsewhere. Even when political considerations are important – for example, in the case of Myanmar – this doesn't mean that the central government is in total control and that commercial considerations are absent.