| Summary/Abstract |
In the fifty years since the People’s Republic of China and Iran formally established diplomatic relations, both states have undergone seismic changes in their domestic environments and foreign relations. In 1971, when the two states formalised their ties, Chairman Mao Zedong oversaw China’s accession to the United Nations following over two decades of autarky and revisionist ambitions, heralding the beginning of the People’s Republic of China’s impressive rise following his death in September 1976 and Deng Xiaoping’s subsequent drive for economic modernisation and reform. Meanwhile, the Shah of Iran, supported by the United States, occupied what appeared at the time to be a stable position as a pillar of Persian Gulf regional security, a role that could not be further removed from that played by the Islamic Republic following the 1979 revolution. Since then, both China and Iran, for different reasons and in different contexts, have been at the forefront of global international relations. In the case of China, its clout has skyrocketed in both economic and diplomatic terms. Its economy is poised to overtake that of the United States, and it has built extensive networks of economic and political interdependencies across the globe. Beijing not only weathered the storms that erupted following the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and the Global Financial Crisis a decade later but thrived in their aftermath.
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