IF CHINA’S RULING elites could decide the duration of President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, two months would be a popular choice.

A short war would not hurt America enough, is the icy verdict of a policy adviser in Beijing.

His calculus reflects a consensus in national-security circles: that Mr Trump’s Middle Eastern campaign is at once a daunting display of firepower and a historic act of self-harm.

Against that, experts agree, a longer conflict would damage China too much.

As the biggest importer of energy and largest exporter of goods, China would suffer if high oil and gas prices or closed shipping routes were to trigger a global recession.

Those same elites concur on one more point: probably, China will do little to shape how or when the Iran war actually ends.

If that stance sounds oddly passive, given all that the country has at stake, this columnist can only agree.

The Telegram just spent 12 days in Beijing and Shanghai, meeting serving and retired officials and military officers, government advisers, scholars of America and of the Middle East, and foreign-policy commentators with millions of followers on social media.

When such experts discuss America’s president and his growing appetite for risk and disruption, they often sound strangely fatalistic, like sailors discussing a dangerous but unavoidable storm

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