by Ché Marino

(Note on terminology: Though Western outlets often use the term “Houthis,” the Yemeni revolutionary movement’s official name is AnsarAllah, and its military arm is the Yemeni Armed Forces.)

Yemen and the People’s Republic of China have built a steady, positive partnership based on sovereignty, non-interference, development, and pragmatic diplomacy. While maintaining their blockade of Israel, AnsarAllah and the Yemeni Armed Forces allow Chinese vessels to move safely through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal.¹ Meanwhile, China defends Yemen’s sovereignty diplomatically on the world stage and supports a Yemen-led political process and recovery.² Their relationship rests on mutual respect, shared interests, and decades of positive diplomatic and economic relations.

The Red Sea Passage 

Yemen sits on one side of the Bab al-Mandeb strait of the Red Sea, which is the gateway to the Suez Canal, the maritime link between Asia, Africa, and Europe. Since 2016, the AnsarAllah-led Supreme Political Council (SPC) in Sana’a has exercised de facto governing authority over Yemen’s western seaboard. In late 2023, AnsarAllah and the Yemeni Armed Forces announced a targeted naval blockade to show material solidarity with Palestinians, impose real costs on Israel, and push to end the genocide in Gaza. 

The Yemeni leaders laid out clear principles: Israeli-linked ships, or ships sailing to Israeli ports, would be blocked. Ships with no link to Israel could pass. On January 19, 2024, senior AnsarAllah official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti said lanes around Yemen were safe for Chinese and Russian ships so long as vessels were not linked to Israel. Omani-mediated talks then brought senior AnsarAllah representatives together with Chinese and Russian officials to concretize those assurances. The following spring, a U.S. sanctions notice described the same point from the other side of the table, noting that safe-passage commitments were conveyed directly to Chinese and Russian officials.³

China has heavy commercial stakes along the Suez corridor.⁴ In keeping with its strict non-interventionist foreign policy, Beijing maintains dual-track communications with both Sana’a and the Western-backed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) headquartered in Aden, to support a Yemen-led peace process and plan for post-war reconstruction. 

At the UN Security Council, Beijing has tied Red Sea tension to the genocide in Gaza, called to protect civilian ships, and stressed respect for Yemen’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Chinese officials have also criticized U.S. and UK airstrikes on Yemen as escalatory.

While many commercial shipping fleets detour around Africa, China-associated ships, including major automobile carriers, keep using Suez, saving time and cost in tight markets.⁵ The U.S. has complained bitterly about this “unfair competition,” and “restriction of trade,” and in early 2025 initiated a series of savage bombing attacks against Yemen, which failed to end the blockade.⁶

Foundations of the China-Yemen Partnership

Yemen was the first country on the Arabian Peninsula to recognize the People’s Republic of China on September 24, 1956.⁷ In the 1950s, Beijing helped build the 266-kilometer Sana’a-Hodeidah highway, a backbone for trade and services. Over time, they added clear rules for investment; in 1998, China and Yemen signed a bilateral treaty that lowered risks for investors and encouraged the influx of long-term capital.⁸

Economic ties deepened in the 2000s. Chinese firms began oil exploration and production. Huawei opened in Yemen in 1999. Joint ventures like the Chinese-Yemeni Star steel company expanded local industry. To tackle power shortages, the China National Corporation for Overseas Economic Cooperation agreed in 2012 to develop three natural gas-fired power plants. Yemen also selected a Chinese contractor for a major expansion of container terminals in Aden and Mokha, in line with national trade goals.⁹

Then, in March 2015, following the popular revolution that brought AnsarAllah to power, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States and the United Kingdom intervened militarily in Yemen. The war and the blockade that followed caused a severe humanitarian crisis. Essential imports were strangled, and the country ran short of food, fuel, and clean water. Cholera spread. Reporting at the time showed that Washington elites hoped the Saudi war and blockade would force AnsarAllah to concede. Instead, they exacerbated the suffering by starving the Yemeni people and devastating their economy.¹⁰

China’s support for Yemeni sovereignty remained steady. It supported a diplomatic solution, emphasized territorial integrity, and engaged in negotiations with both sides.¹¹ It also delivered targeted relief for food and health needs and widened development commitments. In April 2019, Yemen signed a Belt and Road memorandum of understanding in Beijing, which will pave the way for industrial investments with increased regional connectivity in the long term. 

China’s Support for Peace and a Yemen-Led Political Process

In March 2023, Beijing hosted a summit between Saudi and Iranian officials to restore diplomatic relations, making room for de-escalation in Yemen, where Iran has supported AnsarAllah against the Saudi assault. China followed with practical steps. The next month, its envoy met with PLC leaders to map political steps and post-war needs, then met China Harbor Engineering Company’s Middle Eastern branch to connect those priorities to Belt and Road-linked projects.¹² In 2025, China announced tariff exemptions for Yemeni products and said it was ready to resume more than 100 Chinese projects in Yemen after the conflict.¹³ In a meeting with the PLC’s foreign minister, the Chinese ambassador offered humanitarian assistance and expressed China’s interest in helping with reconstruction.¹⁴

China treats Yemen as an equal partner. It listens and invests where it counts: power, ports, and roads that move goods and create jobs. Tariff-free entry to China will help Yemeni farmers and fishers increase exports. Modernizing ports at Aden, Hodeidah, and Mokha, rebuilding the highways that feed them, and adding industrial parks near the docks will all help Yemen operate as a shipping and light-manufacturing hub again, and connect with regional trade routes on its own terms when conditions permit. 

Given that China has all this to offer Yemen, while the West has nothing to offer but war, it is little wonder that Chinese vessels and Chinese diplomats are so much better received in the region. 

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¹VOA News, “Houthis Won’t Target Chinese, Russian Ships in Red Sea,” Voice of America, January 19, 2024, https://www.voanews.com/a/houthis-won-t-target-chinese-russian-ships-in-red-sea/7446893.html. 

²Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Permanent Mission to the UN, “Remarks on Yemen by Ambassador Geng Shuang at the UN Security Council Briefing,” June 12, 2025, https://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/hyyfy/202506/t20250613_11647557.htm.

³Gary Howard, “Houthis Guaranteed Safe Passage to Russian and Chinese Ships, Says OFAC,” Seatrade Maritime News, March 6, 2025, https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/security/houthis-guaranteed-safe-passage-to-russian-and-chinese-ships.

⁴Joe Cash, “Explainer: Houthi Attacks Expose China’s Commercial Stakes in Red Sea,” Reuters, January 15, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthi-attacks-expose-chinas-commercial-stakes-red-sea-2024-01-15/.

⁵ Keith Bradsher, “China’s Automakers Are Taking a Shortcut to European Markets,” New York Times, August 11, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/china-electric-vehicles-red-sea.html.

⁶Nicholas Kristof, “The $7 Billion We Wasted Bombing a Country We Couldn’t Find on a Map,” New York Times, May 17, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/opinion/yemen-war-trump.html.

⁷Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “China and Yemen,” https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/gjhdq_665435/2675_665437/2908_663816/.

⁸ EDIT (Electronic Database of Investment Treaties), “China – Yemen BIT (1998),” 1998, https://edit.wti.org/document/show/718c3112-dd74-4efb-91ae-053807d18e20.

⁹Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, “Why Is China Interested in a Volatile Yemen?,” The Diplomat, June 4, 2014, https://thediplomat.com/2014/06/why-is-china-interested-in-a-volatile-yemen/.

¹⁰Ryan Grim, “To Help End the Yemen War, All China Had to Do Was Be Reasonable,” The Intercept, April 7, 2023, https://theintercept.com/2023/04/07/yemen-war-ceasefire-china-saudi-arabia-iran/.

¹¹Nora Bendary, “Will China Move to Resolve the Yemen Crisis in 2023?,” Arab Wall, February 1, 2023, https://arabwall.com/en/will-china-move-to-resolve-the-yemen-crisis-in-2023/.

¹²Ladislav Charouz, “After Iran–Saudi Mediation, China Angles for Another Diplomatic Victory in Yemen,” The Diplomat, April 22, 2023, https://thediplomat.com/2023/04/after-iran-saudi-mediation-china-angles-for-another-diplomatic-victory-in-yemen/.

¹³Yemen Monitor, “China Exempts Yemeni Goods from Tariffs,” Yemen Monitor, April 13, 2025, https://www.yemenmonitor.com/en/Details/ArtMID/908/ArticleID/137628.

¹⁴Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates (Republic of Yemen), “Yemen and China Discuss Strengthening Bilateral Relations,” July 13, 2025, https://www.mofa-ye.org/Pages/33159/.

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Ché Marino is an organizer with the Bronx Antiwar Coalition (bronxantiwar.org), and a frequent contributor to the Workers World newspaper.