Recently, the People’s Republic of China has become a more overt player in the Middle East. Earlier this year, Beijing brokered a normalization of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two rivals that have long been sat on geopolitical divides. The deal was a shock to the system in Washington D.C, which had for many decades benefitted from exploiting tensions between the two regional parties in order to expand its own footprint. Not only did China do this, but it later invited the President of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, to Beijing, whereby it charted out its own two proposed state solution to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, a stark approach from the US’s unconditional and clandestine backing of "Tel Aviv".
China’s actions in the Middle East are a product of a growing geopolitical rivalry with the United States which has seen Xi Jinping seek to present himself as a more overt player in global peace and diplomacy. In doing so, however, China makes a point of depicting its strategies as existentially different from those the US had used in the region over the course of the past 70 years. While Washington’s legacy in the Middle East is depicted by overt aggression, military conquest, political interference, and regime change, Beijing wants to bring the message of “win-win cooperation”, harmonious co-existence, peace, and diplomacy, offering a refreshing alternative to years of American devastation that has resulted in the destruction of many Arab nations.
American foreign policy in the Middle East is premised on the goal of hegemony, that is maintaining itself as the sole military and political power in the region, with unequivocal monopoly over its resources. To do this, Washington has mainly operated via a “divide and rule” strategy, which is based on leveraging security relationships with several partner states and escalating tensions with targeted enemy countries or groups to weaponize dependency upon it and therefore present itself as a security guarantor, providing for the Military-Industrial Complex. The US has often done so with the obvious strategic knowledge that many crises it creates often lead to the next one in turn, creating a perpetual cycle.
As an example of this, the key security relationships the US has leaned upon in the region include the Israeli occupation, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar, amongst others. In doing so, the US has played upon regional antagonism with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Assad’s Syria, and post-revolutionary Iran, as well as groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, in order to project its own military power.
Instability created by acts such as the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, aggravation of the war on Syria, or the war on Yemen has only served to further US objectives, which deliberately eschewed peace on the subtle recognition that if regional conflicts were to resolve themselves, Washington would have reduced legitimacy in the region.
The approach of the People’s Republic of China to the region, however, is completely different. First of all, China’s foreign policy is premised on attaining “solidarity” with non-western countries it sees as part of the “Global South”, a legacy of the Mao era. Secondly, its foreign policy principles include non-intervention and respect for national sovereignty as a general rule. This means it opts for non-alignment and also avoids evangelizing its own ideology or political system to other countries. Likewise, China’s domestic political priority of seeking development and growth for itself leans toward its preference for stability and certainty in international affairs, as opposed to the US preference for conflict and chaos, as well as the overt attempt to force its ideological worldview on other countries.
Because of this, China approaches the Middle East with a non-ideological, pragmatic vision, of promoting stability in the view of enhancing its own economic engagement with it. China is the world’s largest energy consumer and has little of its own resources, and therefore requires substantial oil imports. This has allowed it to gain increasingly close relationships with the wealthy Gulf sheikhdoms of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which has in turn diluted their dependency on the United States. However, China does not seek a “taking sides” approach with these countries and instead pursues a “best of all worlds” approach that is seeking productive relationships with all states in the region simultaneously, as opposed to the US “bloc” approach. This has seen Beijing seek to establish strong relationships with gulf rivals, such as Iran, and instead of playing on their antagonism, positions itself as a peace-maker and grants them political space to do so.
This has been beneficial for the Middle East as it has allowed the Gulf States to secure greater political autonomy from the US, which deliberately leverages support in exchange for following its geopolitical objectives. For example, in early 2022, the US attempted to force the United Arab Emirates to drop Huawei’s participation in its 5G telecommunications networks, in exchange for purchasing F-35s. The UAE was able to rebuff the US threat and look elsewhere, showing that Washington does not have the power over these countries it once had.
Now, China has paved the way to allow these countries to normalize with Iran, which under US hegemony was simply impossible. In turn, these shifting geopolitical currents in the region have also checked "Israel's" ability to act with impunity and rebuffed the US attempt to force regional parties to recognize "Tel Aviv" on one-sided preferences through the Abraham Accords at the expense of the Palestinians. When all this is considered, China’s footprint in the Middle East is a long overdue equilibrium and a stabilizing force amidst US-led chaos, simply because it gives regional parties another option to better secure their own voice and geopolitical preferences.