China

When you talk about a clear British strategy, I'm afraid I think the Chinese may find that quite hard to see because when Labour came to power it launched a China audit and a year after that, we all expected some form of clear policy to emerge but it didn't. Then Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that we had to understand that most of it remains secret, so one presumes it remains secret to the Chinese and it remains a secret to most of the British government in fact, because few government officials are fully vetted and therefore cannot see secrets."

As far as what China wants in the Strait of Hormuz, I think they like seeing the US have multiple dilemmas in terms of its foreign policy. And when Trump went to China, I think he was looking for a clear offer of help in resolving the situation and he didn't get that. But let's be honest, China was quite smart in terms of its own energy reserves, so it's been able to withstand the pressures of this conflict more so and longer than others - but it won't be able to to hold the line forever."

The private Chinese security players “have evolved from marginal actors into an important instrument of Beijing’s overseas risk-management architecture,” said Alessandro Arduino, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London defense think tank. Chinese private security companies have had a more discreet presence than Russia’s Wagner Group, which acted as a shadow Russian military in parts of Africa, or America’s Blackwater, which provided logistical support for U.S. interventions abroad. “Beijing remains deeply wary of outsourcing violence beyond Party control,” Arduino said.