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China's New Position on the Middle East
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: China has taken several actions relating to the Middle East since the beginning of 2016 that suggest a new approach to the region. The Chinese president visited the Middle East, a new law was passed permitting China to be involved in military action beyond its own borders, and a new Chinese forum was established to promote peace in the region. These actions represent a departure from the traditional Chinese stance of " non-interference " and reflect a change in China's perception of the region.
CHINA'S EVOLVING MIDDLE EAST ROLE
ISDP POLICY PAPERS, 2016
Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China has sought to further consolidate and diversify its relations in the Middle East. This comes on the back of the Chinese lead-er’s Middle East tour in January and the articulation of a new “Arab Policy” unveiled in the same month. Focused on energy, trade, and transport, China is seeking to maximize its economic ties and interests in the region. In particular, Middle Eastern oil supplies remain critical for China’s con-tinued economic development. However, becoming more engaged in the region brings with it a number of implica-tions, not least that Beijing will find it necessary to balance its ties between Sunni and Shia countries.
China’s Role in the Middle East: Current Debates and Future Trends
China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies, 2017
There are two prevailing arguments among international observers about China’s role in the Middle East. One is that China has been a “security free-rider;” the other is that China is fundamentally a business-seeker. Yet neither of the two is well-grounded. If viewed comprehensively rather than in terms of military engagement alone, China’s contribution to stability and security of the region is enormous, and its role in the Middle East can be described as a combination of a major economic partner, a low-profile mediator and a modest but important provider of security public goods. As China has proposed various new concepts and initiatives as guidelines of its foreign policy, its future policy toward the Middle East can be best understood through its increasing efforts to promote the “Belt and Road” initiative, to develop a new-type major-power relationship, and to uphold justice and pursue shared interests with all related countries. With ever more Chinese engagement in the region, ...
CHINA AND THE MIDDLE EAST: VENTURING INTO THE MAELSTROM
China’s increasingly significant economic and security interests in the Middle East have several impacts. It affects not only its energy security but also its regional posture, relations with regional powers as well as the United States, and efforts to pacify nationalist and Islamist Uighurs in its north-western province of Xinjiang. Those interests are considerably enhanced by China’s One Belt, One Road initiative that seeks to patch together a Eurasian land mass through inter-linked infrastructure, investment and expanded trade relations. Protecting its mushrooming interests is forcing China to realign its policies and relationships in the region. As it takes stock of the Middle East and North Africa’s volatility and tumultuous, often violent political transitions, China feels the pressure to acknowledge that it no longer can remain aloof to the Middle East and North Africa’s multiple conflicts. China’s long-standing insistence on non-interference in the domestic affairs of others, refusal to envision a foreign military presence and its perseverance that its primary focus is the development of mutually beneficial economic and commercial relations, increasingly falls short of what it needs to do to safeguard its vital interests. Increasingly, China will have to become a regional player in competitive cooperation with the United States, the dominant external actor in the region for the foreseeable future. The pressure to revisit long-standing foreign and defence policy principles is also driven by the fact that China’s key interests in the Middle East and North Africa have expanded significantly beyond the narrow focus of energy despite its dependence on the region for half of its oil imports.1 Besides the need to protect its investments and nationals, China has a strategic stake in the stability of countries across the Eurasian landmass as a result of its One Belt, One Road initiative and the threat of blowback in Xinjiang of unrest in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. China has signalled its gradual recognition of these new realities with the publication in January 2016 of an Arab Policy Paper, the country’s first articulation of a policy towards the Middle East and North Africa. But, rather than spelling out specific policies, the paper reiterated the generalities of China’s core focus in its relations with the Arab world: economics, energy, counter-terrorism, security, technical cooperation and its One Belt, One Road initiative. Ultimately however, China will have to develop a strategic vision that outlines foreign and defence policies it needs to put in place to protect its expanding strategic, geopolitical, economic, and commercial interests in the Middle East and North Africa; its role and place in the region as a rising superpower in the region; and its relationship and cooperation with the United States in managing, if not resolving conflict.
China Debates Its Future Role in the Middle East
NOREF Expert Analysis, 2014
China will be considerably more dependent on oil imports in the coming years because its growth in consumption far exceeds domestic production. As result of this growing energy demand the country will inevitably be more reliant on the Middle East. Despite the absence of an overall long-term strategy, there is no shortage of debate about China’s future role in the Middle East, although the debate is more about the relationship with the U.S. than anything else. Two opposite views appear: on the one hand, it is claimed that the U.S. position in the Middle East is weakening and that Beijing should adopt a more assertive approach to strengthen Chinese influence in the region. The alternative argument is that the Chinese government should maintain its current cautious approach, avoid contesting the U.S. hegemony, and let the U.S. war machine bleed to death in the troubled region. So far, China has benefitted from its low-key approach to the Middle East. Beijing will most likely try to maintain this policy; however, this might become increasingly difficult as its economic involvement in and dependence on the region becomes more complex.
China's Middle East Policy: Between Continuity and Change
avoidance of steps with high potential for entanglement and risk. At the same time, however, China is facing changes -domestically, in East Asia and the Middle East, and globally -and must adjust to emerging environment. Therefore, in the next few years, China's policy on the Middle East, and change-inhibiting and change-promoting factors.
China’s diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East: the quest for a great-power role in the region
International Relations, 2017
Since the early 2010s, there have been mounting calls in China to intensify its role in the Middle East. But seeing the region as highly turbulent, Beijing seems to restrain its political involvement there. So what role does China actually strive for in the Middle East? To answer this question, the article first presents China’s discourse on its future role in the region; next, it analyzes China’s involvement in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Syrian civil war, focusing on three diplomatic initiatives it has made concerning these issues. The argument here is that China strives to be part of major processes in the Middle East and attempts to advance its values and interests there, but in a unique pattern of big-power involvement in the region, it tries to achieve this without intensive investment of political, economic, and military resources.
DECIPHERING CHINA IN THE MIDDLE EAST
EU ISS Brief, 2020
As a relative newcomer to the region, China has already made significant inroads in the Middle East: many regional states have welcomed its presence and shown eagerness to become involved in its ambitious ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. › The fact that China does not attach any conditions to trade relationships means that its engagement is positively perceived by many states in the region, including US regional allies, much to the dismay of Washington. › Given its status as the second-largest economy in the world, China’s economic penetration of the Middle East inevitably has far-reaching foreign policy and security implications. It remains to be seen if the region turns into an arena of struggle for a new world order between the US and China, which would also have far-reaching implications for the EU.
The Middle East is of major interest to China because it supplies half of the country’s imported oil. • The security and stability of the Middle Eastern Nations are of major importance to China, but Beijing is reluctant to get too deeply enmeshed in the region’s complex politics. • New dynamics in the Middle East beg not just an economic but also a geopolitical response from
THE NEW ROLE OF CHINA IN THE MIDDLE EAST-conference program.pdf
The Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs in cooperation with the School of Law of the University of Nicosia and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) is organizing a Symposium entitled THE NEW ROLE OF CHINA IN THE MIDDLE EAST The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Broader Repercussions Thursday, January 17, 2019 09:00 – 18:00 UNESCO Amphitheatre, Europa Building University of Nicosia