The Wednesday joint statement Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin issued from Beijing's Great Hall of the People — calling the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran "utmost urgency" and condemning "treacherous" strikes — is now three days old. [1] No Chinese Hormuz document has followed it. No IMO notice, no PRC Maritime Safety Administration bulletin, no joint annex on the Strait, and no Chinese shipping advisory from MOFCOM or the Ministry of Transport.

The paper's Thursday brief on the missing Beijing language took the position that the joint statement was rhetorical inventory and the chokepoint was traffic. Friday's update is that the inventory has not been replenished. COSCO published nothing. Sinopec, which buys a meaningful share of Iranian crude through opaque channels, published nothing. The China Maritime Safety Administration's bulletin board carried only routine domestic-coastal notices through Friday's close.

China is, by some estimates, the buyer of roughly 90% of Iranian crude exports. [1] Two Chinese tankers continued moving in and around the Strait this week. The operating ledger and the rhetorical ledger are now on parallel tracks: condemnation in Mandarin from Beijing, payment in renminbi from Tehran's counterparties, no public document binding the two.

Russia and China were the joint signatories Wednesday; Russia and China together vetoed an earlier US-backed Hormuz text in April. France's draft Friday is now the Western alternative. Beijing has not commented on the French text either. Day three is the same day-one tape, dated three times.

-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing