This is a wise decision by President Trump. President Trump announced on Monday that he will delay his long-anticipated trip to China. Trump was expected to visit Beijing in the last week of March. CBS News reported why Trump decided to delay his upcoming trip to China: President Trump said Monday that he’s requested to delay his trip to China because of the war with Iran, now in its third week. He said during an Oval Office event that he “was speaking to China” and indicated he’d “love to” go, “but because of the war, I want to be here. I have to be here, I feel.” “We’ve requested that we delay it a month or so. And I’m looking forward to being with him,” Mr. Trump said of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The president, who was expected to visit China at the end of the month, has urged Beijing and other countries to help the U.S. reopen the Strait of Hormuz to try to bring down oil prices that have surged since the Iran war began. In an interview Sunday with the Financial Times, Mr. Trump said that China’s reliance on oil from the Middle East means it should help with a new coalition he’s trying to assemble to restart oil tanker traffic through the strait after Iran’s threats have throttled global flows of oil. Watch the moment Trump made the announcement here: Trump on his visit to China: Because of the war, I want to be here. I feel I have to be here. And so we’ve requested that we delay it a month or so. pic.twitter.com/LYtj1V00aP — Clash Report (@clashreport) March 16, 2026 So, where does China stand on the Iran War? So far, China has only offered condemnation letters when it comes to the U.S. military operations in Iran. The Jerusalem Post shared that China is also keenly observing the U.S. military attacks to prepare for a future conflict with the U.S.: As Operation Roaring Lion, aka Epic Fury, grinds on into its second week, China is studying every battlefield innovation, every US decision, and every strategic ripple with extraordinary intensity. According to Carice Witte, founder and executive director of the SIGNAL Group, and Amir Husain, a leading American technologist and serial entrepreneur, the conflict with Iran is reshaping global military balances in ways that will reverberate far beyond the region. Their assessments paint a stark picture: China is learning rapidly, the US is burning through critical stockpiles, and the future of warfare is being rewritten in real time. Beijing is looking at the war as a live laboratory for understanding how the United States fights, how it escalates, and how it absorbs simultaneous crises. Speaking to Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post, Witte emphasized that China’s interest in the war is deep and multifaceted. Though the world is watching both Russia’s military capabilities in Ukraine and those of Iran’s in the current conflict, “You cannot put Iran and Russia in the same bucket as China,” according to Witte. “The quality of their equipment is better than Iran’s or Russia’s. China is skilled, smart, and capable. They’ve improved their technology dramatically.” Witte warned that China’s real weakness lies not in equipment, but in experience. “This is not to say that the defense technology being used in this war is not of great interest to the Chinese military and the leadership, as well as tech companies. They will try to find out the details, understand what works, and try to acquire information to produce the equipment that they feel is most relevant. That all goes without saying.” However, Witte added, “No Chinese fighter has ever seen real battle, much less the battle of the 21st century.”