BEIJING — China called Friday for an immediate halt to the fighting between Israel, the United States and Iran, signaling a sharper diplomatic posture as Beijing’s oil import bill swelled and refiners drew down strategic stockpiles for a third consecutive week.

In a statement read at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ regular briefing, spokesperson Mao Ning urged “all parties to exercise restraint, avoid further escalation and return without delay to a political track.” She said China was “in close communication” with the mediators leading the Islamabad track — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — and was prepared to “play a constructive role consistent with its longstanding friendship with all peoples of the region.”

The intervention was the most explicit Chinese statement on the war since fighting began in early March, and analysts said it reflected a shift from Beijing’s earlier preference to let regional powers carry the diplomatic load. The shift coincided with mounting evidence that the conflict, now in its fifth week, was straining a Chinese economy already navigating a slow property-sector recovery and weaker-than-expected first-quarter consumer spending.

“Beijing was content to issue boilerplate calls for restraint when oil was at $90 and the Hormuz traffic was still moving,” said Wen Liu, a senior fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies. “At $108 and with insurance premiums on Gulf tankers tripled, the calculus has changed. China is the largest single buyer of Iranian crude through the gray channel, and that channel has effectively collapsed.”

Customs data released Thursday showed China’s crude oil imports in March fell 9.4 percent from a year earlier to 10.2 million barrels a day, the steepest monthly decline since the early pandemic period. Imports from Iran, which had averaged roughly 1.4 million barrels a day through the second half of 2025 according to tanker-tracking firm Kpler, dropped to under 300,000 barrels a day as Israeli strikes damaged loading facilities at Kharg Island and as state-owned shipping companies in Asia quietly halted Iranian liftings to avoid secondary sanctions exposure.

Refiners in Shandong province, which process the bulk of discounted Iranian and Venezuelan barrels, have been the worst affected. Three independent refiners suspended operations in late March, according to industry consultancy JLC, and the broader teapot sector ran at an estimated 51 percent of capacity last week, the lowest reading in more than two years. To partially backfill the shortfall, the National Development and Reform Commission authorized the release of an additional 12 million barrels from state strategic reserves on March 28, a person familiar with the matter said. The NDRC did not confirm the figure.

The economic strain has fed into a broader debate inside the Chinese system about how exposed Beijing has become to a Middle East security order in which it has cultivated commercial relationships but declined to assume political responsibility. The 2023 deal brokered by China between Saudi Arabia and Iran, once held up as evidence of Beijing’s growing diplomatic weight, has produced no visible role for China in the current crisis. Saudi mediation has flowed through Riyadh’s own channels and through the trilateral with Islamabad and Cairo.

“There is a quiet reassessment underway,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst who tracks Gulf-Asia ties. “Chinese officials are being asked by Gulf partners, with increasing directness, what Beijing is prepared to do — not just say. The answer so far has been ambiguous. Friday’s statement is a step toward a less ambiguous answer, but only a step.”

The Foreign Ministry statement did not name Israel or the United States, and Mao declined to characterize the U.S. campaign as aggression when pressed by a reporter from Russia’s TASS news agency. She instead repeated the formulation that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected,” which has become Beijing’s standard phrasing on the war. Chinese state media coverage, by contrast, has grown markedly more critical of Washington over the past two weeks, with the Global Times running a front-page commentary Thursday accusing the Trump administration of “dragging the world economy into a fire of its own making.”

Diplomats in Beijing said the Chinese leadership has been in active contact with Tehran. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, by phone on Wednesday, according to a readout published by Iran’s foreign ministry but not initially confirmed by Beijing. The Chinese readout, released later Thursday, said Wang had urged Tehran to “seize the diplomatic window” opening through the Islamabad track and had reiterated China’s opposition to “the politicization of energy flows in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Inside the U.S. administration, officials have watched Beijing’s positioning with mixed feelings. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments, said Chinese pressure on Tehran to come to the table was “broadly welcome” but that Washington had no intention of granting China a formal seat at any negotiating venue. “The mediators are the mediators,” the official said, referring to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. “We are not going to backfill a role for Beijing because Beijing has decided it is uncomfortable with the price of crude.”

Markets registered Friday’s Chinese statement only modestly. Brent crude settled at $107.40 a barrel, down 80 cents on the day, with traders attributing most of the move to position-squaring ahead of next week’s expected resumption of OPEC+ deliberations in Vienna. The CSI 300 index in Shanghai closed up 0.6 percent, while shares of Sinopec and PetroChina each gained more than 1 percent on speculation that a negotiated halt to the fighting could restore discounted Iranian flows within weeks rather than months.

Elsewhere in the region, the Chinese statement was received cautiously. A Pakistani foreign ministry official in Islamabad welcomed Beijing’s call but said the mediators’ framework would remain the operative track. Saudi officials declined to comment on the record. An Israeli government spokesperson, asked at a Tel Aviv briefing whether China could be useful in pressuring Tehran, responded that “any country with influence in Tehran is invited to use it, including China,” but added that Jerusalem expected such pressure to be exerted “privately and without conditions on Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Chinese officials said additional steps, including a possible visit by a special envoy to the region, would be considered in the coming days.