I don't think it can quite be reduced to "heart", but certainly I'd agree the USSR was trying to help in the ways they could think of to do so and didn't have a reference on it to guide them. The way I see it, the CPC is more cautious and guarded with international policy, but this is to be expected as a reaction to the conditions that followed the collapse of the USSR. Not only was it imperative that they not become USSR collapse 2.0, they were also now working in a world that had far less international communist support.

Like it's easy to say they morally should be on the front lines of support for Palestine, for example, but what that looks like as long-term strategy across a decades view of planning is a more complicated question. It is probably more sustainable for them to help ensure that Iran is a pillar of anti-imperialist resistance in the region than to try to intervene more directly. Iran is capable of doing a debasing process in the region that China can't do in the same way. Iran is capable of doing material solidarity with like-minded regional forces that China can't do in the same way.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, it is probably more insightful for us to ask: Why is China doing things the way that they are? Rather than, why aren't they doing everything we'd like.