For the past several years, the Middle East has been China’s key trading hub, not least because of more than 70 per cent of the oil that Beijing imports from here. Between 2017 and 2022, China’s bilateral trade with this region jumped from US$262 billion to US$507 billion. In 2022 alone, the region saw its trade with China jumping by more than 27 per cent. This was the largest increase in China’s trade compared with other regions, such as the ASEAN. China, as such, is already the single largest trading partner with many key Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Any geopolitical tension in the region should, therefore, involve Beijing as a major player. Yet, we don’t see China playing a geopolitically dominant role in the region. Compared with the US, Beijing continues to maintain a low-profile presence, avoiding getting entangled in regional conflicts. Why is this the case and how is Beijing able to avoid conflicts?
The Lame Accusations
First come the lame Western accusations that frame China’s success in avoiding conflicts as part of Beijing’s strategy to create chaos silently but intentionally. In an article published in Foreign Affairs, former US Deputy National Security Adviser, Matt Pottinger, and House Representative, Mike Gallagher, accused China of its “policy of fostering global chaos”. According to this argument, Beijing is able to avoid deep entanglements in conflicts purely because it helps create those conflicts in the first place to trap Washington and its allies. With the latter thus trapped, they find themselves unable to compete with China directly in economic terms. It leaves all space open for China to grab.
But this argument makes little to no sense. If China actually “foments” conflicts, why is it not able to see that the same conflicts, if they spill over, would massively disrupt China’s own trade routes? A major hub of Chinese trade is, for instance, the Dubai port. A war in the region could halt these operations. Similarly, Iran is a major supplier of oil to China. A war between Iran and Israel would have a similar impact on the Chinese economy, disrupting the Silk routes and jeopardizing China’s aim to achieve “national rejuvenation” by 2049 i.e., a revival that would return China to its rightful place as a great power. Conflict in the Red Sea would be a massive disruption too. Wars, therefore, make no economic sense for Beijing. There is a logic for this.
The Lesson Learnt
China, as it stands, seems to have learnt a crucial lesson from the US. A key reason why the US global influence has declined over the past two decades is its many wars. The many wars it fought – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine/Israel, etc. – not only took a heavy toll in terms of trillions of dollars on the US economy, but Washington’s inability to win them squarely put a big dent in its global credibility as a superpower. Therefore, for China, directly starting or indirectly fomenting wars is a counterproductive strategy that causes more harm than good. It is for this reason that China, for instance, brokered peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This policy is diametrically opposite to Washington’s, which relies more on selling fear of Iran – and its atomic bomb – to maintain tensions i.e., chaos.
Beijing, on the contrary, is doing something else. It is investing in – and selling – the economic future. In 2023, for instance, the Chinese electric vehicle producer Human Horizons signed a $5.6 billion deal with Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China signed a new memorandum of understanding under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative to deepen their economic engagement, particularly on green technology. Chinese and Dubai port authorities are now interlinked.
Beijing’s Strategic Vision
But the politics of reconciliation and futuristic development in the Middle East are not random incidents. This process is grounded in a policy vision that Chinese leadership unveiled as early as 2014. As part of what is known as comprehensive national security, Beijing’s definition of national security is not, unlike the US/West, merely the absence of threats and/or their elimination. (National Security = ‘War on Terror’ in the US.) Beijing’s 16-point definition of national security, for instance, involves “resource security”. Keeping this in mind, it makes sense why China would push for reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, China’s two major oil suppliers. A war between them could deprive China of a big chunk of its oil. An oil shortage would seriously disrupt its economy and compromise “economic security”, which could have serious political implications in the domestic arena. For China, therefore, resource and economic security is directly tied to another key aspect of national security, which it calls “political security” i.e., maintaining regime stability and party supremacy.
As such, even though there are challenges that China faces in the Middle East, it avoids resorting to force despite having the capability to do so. For instance, Houthi attacks in the Red Sea could have seriously disrupted Chinese trade. Beijing sends almost US$280 billion worth of goods via the Red Sea annually. Houthi attacks threatened a regional war that could have brought this shipping line to a halt. China, like the US, could have used force. However, it preferred negotiations via Iran to convince Houthis not to attack their ships. Now, Beijing was able to use this channel because of the leverage it has over Iran. Washington doesn’t have such a channel; therefore, it could do little more than counter-attack.
Blaming China for the absence of strong diplomatic channels is, therefore, not only unrealistic but also foolish on the part of Washington. China prefers stability rather than chaos. Accordingly, it has built deep diplomatic channels across all states in the Middle East that it is able to use to maintain a stable economic order. It is Washington that prefers chaos so that this economic order fails to generate the desired outcomes for Beijing. There is no denying that China sees itself as a rising global power, but the path it has chosen does not involve wars and conflicts; rather, it involves deep economic ties giving Beijing critical leverage over how things happen inside and outside of China.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
