Indeed there is a long standing relationship between Syria and China. The alliance was established in 1956 and when in 1963, the centrist government of Syria was overthrown in a coup d’état led by military officers loyal to the Syrian Ba’ath Party (an Islamic socialist movement that has ruled continuously . Similar The Ba’ath movement was also the intellectual basis of Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Saddam however was a nationalist, Syria’s version of Ba'athism envisions a pan-Arab, socialist style of governance.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, China has been eager to expand its influence in other socialist states. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the pillar that had propped up the regime of Assad's dad, Hafiz al Assad, was gone and Damascus had to look towards Beijing, the last major communist regime standing, for support. China was keen to have a frienly nation with a Mediterranean coastline and a deal to build Syria a small 30MW nuclear research reactor and supply intermediate range ballistic missiles was concluded. Following the 2004 visit of Bashar al-Assad to Beijing, economic relations picked up, with China investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the Syrian oil industry. Bilateral trade jumped from US$174 million in 2000 to US$2.27 billion by 2010, making China Syria’s third most important trade partner.
This has created a lot of goodwill towards Beijing among Syria’s political establishment but the far eastern state former still lags behind Russia and Iran in the estimation of the al-Assad family.
Since the start of the civil war China has approached the conflict in its usual cautious manner. On one hand China's foreign policy has traditionally been directed towards maintaining its role as the major regional power in south east Asia and The Pacific, but Beijing would be reluctant to see its middle eastern ally fall and be replaced by a Sunni Muslim puppet government of Islamic fundamentalists. Since a similar US - Saudi - Arabia backed regime change war in Libya and subsequent collapse of that country, formerly Africa's righest and most socially advanced nation, into a chaotic failed state robbed China of one of its most important oil suppliers Beijing has taken a much harder line against Western interventionism, which it sees as jeopardizing its own economic interests. (One example of this was China using its Security Council veto power to block UN resolutions sanctioning Syria for using chemical weapons against its citizens.) Added to that, Assad remaining in power strengthens the position in the region of Iran, another Chinese ally, which China is coming to perceive as a counterweight to American domination in the Persian Gulf.
Although Beijing has not yet seriously committed military support to Syria beyond a small force of weapons technicians nobody should doubt how far it will go to keep the al-Assad regime in power. So far Iran has taken care of ISIS on the ground, with air support from Russia, and Putin has faced down the threats made by the USA.
Chinese support so far has been largely symbolic, but while Assad is perceibed to be winning that's fine. In the event of an al-Assad victory, Russia and Iran will likely come to dominate the foreign policy of whatever is left of the regime in Damascus. However it will likely be China that rebuilds the nation, and its ports, from the ground up, buying itself a far more stable and strategic foothold in Syrian affairs in the process.
On the other hand, if it looks as if Assad will fall, or if there are any more false flag events engineered by the Americans to justify direct NATO intervention in Syria's civil war, expect China to be lining up with Russia and Iran in support of Assad.
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