Beijing calls on the Houthis to stop their campaign against merchant shipping

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi met with his Yemeni counterpart Shaya Mohsen Al-Zindan today in Beijing where the dire security situation in and around the Red Sea was discussed. 

Wang said the Red Sea situation was directly down to the ongoing war in Gaza. 

“China calls for an end to harassment of civilian ships and maintenance of the safety of waterways in the Red Sea, and is willing to continue to play a constructive role in this regard,” a release from the foreign ministry in Beijing stated today. 

China has had dialogue with Iran over the Red Sea shipping crisis in recent months, but with seemingly little success in getting the backers of the Houthis to restrain their attacks. Chinese shipping interests have been among the more than 100 merchant vessels attacked by the Houthis since last November in a campaign launched in solidarity with the Palestinians fighting their war with Israel in Gaza. 

Last Friday, member states of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) called for an immediate end to ongoing attacks on ships and seafarers transiting through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

In a resolution adopted in London, IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee condemned the attacks as “illegal and unjustifiable”, posing a direct threat to the freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical waterways, while causing major disruptions to regional and global trade. 

“Shipping continues to largely avoid the Red Sea,” states a new shipping report from Bank of America, whose base case is a return to the Red Sea only in April 2025.