China has made a major contribution to the process. It has voted for three Security Council resolutions leading to sanctions, despite its good economic relations with Iran and its long-held position that sanctions are not the right way to find a solution. Chinese leaders have on many occasions tried to persuade Iran to show flexibility. President Hu Jintao has held several sideline meetings with President Ahmadinejad at SCO summits.

China’s constructive role is in accordance with its commitment to the non-proliferation treaty, and was also to some extent a payback for George W. Bush’s China policy. Despite friction during Bush’s early days in the White House, his administration maintained a policy acceptable to China, for example his unwavering insistence that he and his family would attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games.

The current disagreement between China and the west regarding a new Security Council sanctions resolution is firstly the reflection of the differences in the way the two sides approach the issue. Iran’s discounted nuclear fuel swap proposal went in defiance of the IAEA’s original plan preferred by the U.S., and Teheran's unilateral decision to start enriching uranium to 20 percent angered the West. The U.S. and EU believe “that once the international community speaks in unison around a resolution then the Iranians will come on board and begin to negotiate.” But China, though sharing the same concerns about proliferation, has long held that the Iranian nuclear issue should be addressed peacefully through negotiations, and maintains that, as has been previously proven many times, sanctions cannot solve the problem.

Ironically, although it was the troika, the predecessor of the current P5+1, that in 2003 initiated the principle that diplomatic means should be used to address the Iranian nuclear issue, it is China that has consistently adhered to the principle. As soon as Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel took office, they jettisoned the diplomatic approach and began to take a hard line. The EU should take the blame for the current divisions, and although Ahmadinejad’s provocative policies are also to blame, they can, in some ways, be attributed to the EU’s change of approach.

The latest developments in US policy towards China are another cause of current disputes between China and the West. China regards non-proliferation as in its national interest. However, China has every reason to question why it should cooperate on an issue Washington defines as closely tied up with US national security at a moment when the Obama administration is seriously undermining China’s core national interests, for example by the sale of arms to Taiwan, Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama, and the Google affair. Both time and concrete actions will be needed to rebuild trust and momentum in US-China relations.