The U.S. midterm elections on November 3 were closely watched around the world as a way to gauge public support for the polarizing administration of Donald Trump. The verdict is in: the opposition Democratic Party won big, taking control of both houses of Congress with majorities Democrats haven’t enjoyed in years. Several states elected Democratic senators and governors for the first time in decades – in some cases, nearly a century.

Officially, of course, China won’t comment on the results of the election. That, as Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters on November 4, is “a domestic affair” of the United States. “China stands ready to continue working with the U.S. to uphold and deliver on the important common understandings reached by the two heads of state,” Mao said.

In a speech delivered on election day, Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the United States, said, “A confident and composed China is committed to the steady, sound, and sustainable development of China-U.S. relations… China’s policy toward the United States remains consistent and stable.”

The first news readouts from Xinhua, China’s state news agency, were also terse, although the points of information they chose to include were telling. In one early article, for example, Xinhua did not mention the historic nature of Democratic Party wins, but instead quoted Trump’s social media post that “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” The short, three-paragraph report also devoted the entire last paragraph to comments from a White House official, who predicted U.S. voters “will suffer from severe buyer’s remorse.”

Xinhua published a much longer analysis on November 4, highlighting four “unexpected” outcomes. This article delved into the massive scale of the Democratic victory, from the size of its new House majority to the flipping of Senate seats in traditionally safe Republican states like Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina.

Rather than offering perspectives from Chinese analysts, Xinhua’s article extensively cited U.S. media, including this quote from the Wall Street Journal: “Rarely in American politics has a president traded away so much political support so quickly. The losses that Republicans suffered on Tuesday marked one of the most decisive repudiations of a president in modern history.”

Chinese state media had much less to say about the causes of the Republican defeat – again, Beijing’s official line being that this is an “internal affair” of the United States. However, Xinhua did cite the general thesis by U.S. analysts that economic dissatisfaction amid rising prices was the primary culprit. And those rising prices were exacerbated by the Trump administration’s decision to strike Iran. Xinhua published a whole article covering Vice President J.D. Vance’s post-election verdict that the war on Iran had cost the Republicans control of Congress.

One Xinhua report cited Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Ghalibaf, who posted on X: “Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.”

“What the Chinese public is most concerned about … is the impact of the U.S. midterm election results on the Iran war and Ukraine war,” Mu Chunshan, an independent political analysts based in Beijing, told The Diplomat via email. “They are less focused on the impact on China-U.S. relations. This is because Trump has consistently shown respect to China.”

If Democrats act to restrain Trump’s military operations in Iran, Mu said, it would be align “with China’s long-standing call for a peaceful resolution of the Iran nuclear issue.” He sees the election results as “conducive to China and other countries pushing for a negotiated resolution of the Iran nuclear issue and Strait [of Hormuz] security issues.”

That said, Chinese analysts are well aware of Congress’ limited control over foreign policy. In an pre-election analysis, South China Morning Post cited Zhao Zhijiang, a research assistant at the Beijing-based independent think tank Anbound, as predicting that “Diplomacy may become even more transactional. U.S. policy towards Russia, Iran, Europe and China could swing rapidly between heavy pressuring and partial bargaining.” In other words, China is bracing for impact as a notoriously mercurial leader feels increased political pressure at home.

Diao Daming, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing, told SCMP Trump might become more “legacy-driven” in his pursuit of foreign policy.  “On the other hand, in areas he believes he can control or achieve results quickly, he may also take some risky actions,” Diao said. 

With a Trump-Xi summit looming later this month, China will be one of the first to get a feel for how the midterm defeat impacts Trump’s foreign policy style. China is hosting the APEC Leaders’ Meeting from November 18-19, with Trump expected to attend. Beside yet another summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping – the third in 2026 alone – there has been much discussion of other potential sideline meetings, including a possible China-Russia-U.S. trilateral.

China had its own reasons to be skeptical about hosting such a meeting. After the midterm outcomes, which will likely result in increased congressional support for Ukraine, there’s even less reason for Beijing to look positively on the prospects of a Putin-Trump-Xi meeting.

“At the APEC summit, if China, the US and Russia hold a trilateral summit, there is a high probability that the Ukraine war will not be discussed, because the midterm results make it harder for Trump to pressure Ukraine into accepting a ‘land-for-peace’ plan.” Mu said. “For China, discussing this is meaningless. Any peace plan must indeed fully take into account the views of Ukraine and Europe. This should be similar to the views of the new U.S. Congress.”

Also with the APEC summit in mind, Chinese policymakers will want to see if Trump is willing to strike a bargain to secure quick economic gains, given U.S. voter anger over the cost of living. There is also hope that a Democratic Congress would do more to push back on Trump’s use of tariffs – a tool that typically belongs to the legislative branch, not the executive, under the U.S. system of government.

“If the Democrats can restrain Trump’s impulses to China and other countries in the areas of tariffs and trade, that would be better for China-U.S. relations,” Mu said.

But few in China expect a Democratic-majority Congress to look too much different. “Structural contradictions exist in China-U.S. relations, and both the two parties share negative views on China, for example on national security or high-tech competition,” Mu noted. “These will not change in any particular way due to the outcome of the midterms.”

More broadly, Chinese analysts largely took the U.S. election results as evidence for already-held assumptions about a crumbling U.S. political system. Xinhua’s own original reporting, including on-the-street interviews with voters, portrayed a sense of pessimism and despair. Nearly all the quotes were from voters who expressed doubt that anything would change, regardless of who is in power. One sample: “I have no confidence in any politician, and I don’t think they will focus on what is right for us.”

That was a far cry from the palpable sense of optimism emanating from the Democratic Party as the election results rolled in. But it does fit nearly with China’s preferred thesis that the United States is locked into an irreversible decline. 

And whatever Beijing may say about the election being the United States’ “domestic affair,” it will not be lost on Chinese leaders that an unpopular war far from home, and its economic consequences, resulted in severe political punishment for the ruling party. That will factor in to China’s ongoing calculations about what the Iran-U.S. war might imply about Americans’ appetite for intervention in a Taiwan crisis.