China and the Middle East : Embarking on a Strategic Approach
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No. 183/2014
dated 16 September 2014
China and the Middle
East :
Embarking on a
Strategic Approach
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
As the United States becomes embroiled in yet another military intervention in the Middle East, China is embarking on a long-term approach to the region that would secure its access to resources and trade, and enable cooperation with the US on Chinese terms. The approach takes as its starting point that with US influence in the region in decline, political and economic indicators suggest that it’s just a matter of time before the pendulum swings in China’s favour.
Commentary
CHINA HAS embarked on a Middle East strategy that is shaped as much by contemporary US predicaments in the Middle East as it is by a set of foreign policy principles that contrast starkly with those of the United States, with a determination not to repeat what China views as US mistakes. While there appears to be broad consensus on these points, China’s policy community seems to be divided on a host of questions related to integrating them into a comprehensive policy towards the region. These questions range from the role of democratization to the degree to which China should assert its influence in the region.
The extent of the policy debate was evident
during a recent government-endorsed two-day symposium between Chinese policy
analysts and former ambassadors to the Middle East and several of their
scholarly Western and Arab colleagues. A glimpse of those differences goes some
way to explain the focus of the Chinese policy debate. The debate is framed by
an emphasis on external rather than domestic drivers of crisis in the Middle
East and the importance attached to the formal aspects of political processes
such as Chinese official statements and outcomes of elections in the region
irrespective of whether they were free and fair, for example Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad’s re-election in June, rather than political reality on the
ground. Ironically, framing that alongside the principle of non-intervention in
a country’s domestic affairs effectively amounts to support for autocratic
regimes in the Middle East, a policy for which the United States has paid
dearly.
The
end of US hegemony
The contours of Chinese policy in the Middle
East and the assumptions on which they are based have begun to emerge even as
US credibility is undermined as a result of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, US
support for political change in the region is perceived to be misled; US
reluctance to become further embroiled in the region’s conflicts foremost among
which is Syria, and its inability to nudge Israelis and Palestinians towards a
resolution of their dispute. “US backing off on the Syrian chemical weapons
issue signalled the end of US hegemony,” said An Huihou of Shanghai
International Studies University’s (SIIS) Middle East Institute who served as
Chinese ambassador in five Arab countries. An was referring to the
Russian initiated negotiated resolution of the issue after US President Barack
Obama last year shied away from acting militarily on what he had earlier
described as a red line.
Like geopolitics, economics also mitigate in
China’s favour. The era of an economic focus of oil-rich Gulf states on the
United States and Europe ended last year when China replaced the European Union
as the region’s foremost trading partner, pushing the US to second place and
India moving Japan out of third place. “It’s a shift from the old
industrialized powers to the newly industrialized powers,” said Tim Niblock`, a
renowned expert on Gulf-Asian relations.
Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined his country’s
policy framework towards the region when he called in June of last year for the
revival of the Silk Road under the motto of One Belt, One Road. “The Silk Road
is an important guide for China’s Middle East diplomacy,” said Wang Jian,
director of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences’ West Asia and North Africa
Research Centre. “Arab countries are at the western intersection of one road,
one belt,” added SIIS’s Ye Qing.
Lofty principles; harsh reality
Leaving aside the sheer audacity and scope of
Xi Jinping’s Silk Road project that focuses on integrating the enormous
swathe of territories between China and the Middle East by
concentrating on infrastructure, transportation, energy, telecommunications,
technology and security, applying China’s lofty principles is easier said than
done and raises a host of unanswered questions. Its insistence on
multi-polarity as opposed to US dominance in the Middle East implicitly means
that the status of the US in the region would have to deteriorate further significantly
before Washington, despite Obama’s willingness to consult with others in
contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush, would be willing to entertain the
Chinese approach.
In the absence of US acquiescence, that
approach risks Chinese interests being threatened by the spiralling violence in
the region, including the feared spill over of Islamic State-style jihadism in
Xinjiang. Non-intervention coupled with unconditional aid could further
threaten Chinese interests if and when political change occurs as happened in
Libya after the overthrow of Col. Moammar Qaddafi. Qaddafi’s immediate
successors threatened to disadvantage China in the reconstruction of the
country because of its ties with the Qaddafi regime to the bitter end.
China and the US could find easier common ground on the principle of adherence
to international legality, a principle Obama emphasised when he was first
elected. However, that has so far been thwarted by the blocking of resolutions
regarding Syria by China and Russia rendering the United Nations
Security Council impotent .
China’s policy approach to the Middle East is
reinforced by its conclusion from the US predicament in the region that no one
power can help the region restore stability and embark on a road of equitable
and sustainable development. “Replacing the US is a trap China should not fall
into,” Wang Jian said. At the same time, he justified Chinese non-interference
with the government’s conviction that the chaos in the region meant that this
was not the time to intervene – an approach that many in the Chinese policy
community believe allows China to let the US stew in its own soup.
At the crux of the Chinese debate is the same
dilemma that stymies US policy in the Middle East: the clash between lofty
principles and harsh reality that produces perceptions of a policy that is
riddled with contradictions and fails to live up to the values it enunciates.
Non-intervention coupled with economic incentives has so far allowed China to
paper over some of those dilemmas. That may be more difficult to maintain as
the crisis in the Middle East escalates and potentially spills out of the
region and closer to home and China’s economic stake increases. To many in the
Chinese policy community, dealing with this dilemma makes cooperation between
the United States and China an imperative. The question however is: on whose
terms?
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of
Wurzburg and the author of the blog.The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
and a forthcoming book with the same title.
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