China Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent tour of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan typified his country’s approach to the region: Be boring.
Wang spoke of promoting strategic communication, enhancing mutual trust and resolving differences through dialogue. There were no headline-grabbing announcements, much less any hint of drama. The operative d word is diplomacy. Pity the poor journalist who had to fashion stories out of pronouncements like those.
But behind the blandness lies a focused strategy to grow Beijing’s influence in a region that supplies most of its imported oil and where China’s the largest trade partner. The Chinese want to talk, and talk, and avoid the kind of security entanglements in the Middle East that have long been a feature of U.S. involvement here. Beijing brings a different kind of stick to this region.
The third installment of MBN’s China Tracker shows how China’s leaders have engaged with MENA countries as they seek greater markets for their goods, increased global status and future access to the region’s oil.
Over the past 35 years, American presidents have been a much more visible presence in the region, visiting the MENA countries 69 times compared to just 26 visits by their Chinese counterparts. The reverse is true too. MENA leaders have more frequently visited the U.S. versus China – 545 trips, compared to 106. (The numbers are somewhat skewed by the fact that more than one-third of the trips to the U.S. were part of visits to the U.N. in New York.)
“China believes the global image and perception of the United States is in decline and that there is an opportunity to step into this gap and build up its own influence.” – Bates Gill, senior fellow for Asian Security with the National Bureau of Asian Research
Beijing instead vests much of its strategic aims in forums that offer the opportunity to meet with multiple countries at once rather than in one-on-one settings to position itself as a viable alternative to the U.S. and the West, the data shows.
According to the tracker, China has held 69 multilateral talks with MENA countries since 2020, versus 35 for the U.S.
Xi of Arabia
The original BRICs plus group of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – now includes Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Iran is also part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which seeks to establish a security architecture for its members, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar holding dialogue-partner status.
This year, China plans to host a summit with Arab States to continue to push for new partnerships, including a long-sought free trade deal with the six nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Though China views alliances more skeptically than does the U.S., it has conferred “comprehensive strategic partnership” status, its highest diplomatic designation, on seven MENA countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The U.S. in comparison has granted Bahrain and Egypt “major non-NATO ally” status, a signal of their relative strategic importance to the U.S., along with Tunisia, Jordan, Kuwait and Israel.
China’s approach to MENA is a piece of its broader strategy to deepen diplomatic, economic and cultural ties to the Global South, as its relationship with the U.S. has deteriorated, says Bates Gill, a senior fellow for Asian Security with the National Bureau of Asian Research.
“[China] believes the global image and perception of the United States is in decline and that there is an opportunity to step into this gap and build up its own influence and presence in key regions around the world, while also putting forth an alternative vision for how the world should work,” Gill said in an email.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s four global initiatives, focused on development, security, governance and institutional reform, have been well received in the region, Gill said. Polls show most regional attitudes are more favorable to China than the U.S.
Gaza Opening
The conflict in Gaza has offered China another opportunity to score points with its Arab partners and differentiate itself from the U.S., which has backed Israel in the conflict. Chinese leaders have consistently supported a Palestinian state.
China’s efforts to portray itself as like-minded in many respects to the smaller, poorer countries of the world can be seen perhaps most clearly in its votes in the United Nations, the tracker shows. China and MENA countries are consistently aligned when it comes to questions of respect for national sovereignty and non-intervention, as well as Palestinian statehood.
The U.S. in contrast to regional attitudes is much more likely to vote for resolutions seen as favorable to Israel, in defense of human rights, or for sanctions that punish perceived bad actors, tracker data shows.
China says its approach paid off in 2023, when it was able to help broker a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a country that the U.S. views as a strategic adversary.
But even though Iran is one of China’s closest allies in the region, their relationship also demonstrates the latter’s reluctance to put too many of its eggs in one basket. Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, recently noted that China has refrained from selling any “game-changing” military equipment to Iran, whose deficiencies were so clearly evident in its 12 Day War with Israel and the U.S. bombing of nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Fan Hongda, the director of the China-Middle East Center at Shaoxing University, wrote in an article for ThinkChina that Iran’s internal turmoil limits China’s willingness to engage.
China also has been far less central than the U.S. in mediating the Gaza conflict or in ensuring oil tankers are able to move freely in the region. Even so, China’s strategy to gain influence without taking ownership appears to be working.
Jim Snyder
Jim Snyder is a journalist and former investigative editor at Radio Free Asia.
