Beijing

On 2 May 2026 Beijing's Ministry of Commerce activated its 2021 Blocking Rules for the first time in five years, naming five refineries it now shields from US Treasury orders and opening Chinese courts to lawsuits against any firm that complies with Washington's sanctions . Eleven days earlier, Decree No. 835 had already handed a parallel counter-sanctions list to the Ministry of Justice, converting any future designation from a trade dispute into a domestic law-enforcement matter.

By 25 May China's banking regulator ordered its four largest state banks to halt new lending to the sanctioned refiners, even as Xi Jinping hosted Pakistan's Sharif and Munir in Beijing for Iran mediation . Two days later Trump barred Beijing, alongside Moscow, as custodian for Iran's uranium stockpile, closing the one channel through which its diplomacy might have been formalised.

Beijing cut Russian crude purchases 23% month-on-month in May 2026 as the Hormuz price premium faded with an approaching Iran Ceasefire, even as Russia's total fossil-fuel earnings still rose 2% on a 49% recovery in Baltic port shipments .

The swing reversed within a month: by June, Beijing again took 41% of top-five-buyer purchases of discounted Urals crude, trailing only India's 34% rise to a record, even as the price itself fell 26% to $63.18 a barrel. Its buying tracks price and geopolitical risk, not a fixed import policy .