China’s Middle East Pivot has Sent Washington Packing
Sino-Arab relations have gone a long away over recent decades, gradually evolving into a rather complex system. Of course, the rapid emergence of a new multipolar world allowed the ties between Beijing and the Middle East to get even more traction. For the longest time China has been perceived by Arab tries of the Arab region as an alternative force that has a lot of weight on the international stage, so it’s only logical that some of the local players are now trying to take advantage of the fact that it remains one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. In turn, Beijing recognizes these attempts and tries to use them to gain more leverage in regional affairs.
Those turbulent events that have turned the Middle East upside down in the last decade forced China into reevaluating the role this region would play in his designs, as it became imperative for Beijing to decide which local players are going to be his key partners in the region and how much effort it’s willing to put into supporting them.
As bilateral ties between Beijing and Washington hit an all time low, a lot of attention was to be attached to the recent eighth China-Arab Cooperation Forum, which brought together representatives of a total of 21 MENA region countries in Beijing. The fact that this event was attended by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit transformed this meeting in a milestone event. Those attending the forum were urged to increase trade and cooperation, develop infrastructure projects, which are seem to be Beijing’s direct response to the trade war unleashed against it by the United States.
This war was announced by Donald Trump a short while ago, and the tensions keep rising as months go buy. Among the accusations that the White House voiced against China, the gravest one is an alleged restriction on American imports, which in Trump’s mind led to a great imbalance in the trade turnover between the two countries. Attempts to negotiate the issue did not allow the sides to come to a mutually acceptable solution, which resulted in the American side imposing protective duties against a number of Chinese goods. Unsurprisingly, Beijing responded in a similar faction, by actually imposing the high import duties on hundreds of items imported from the US.
Under these conditions, Beijing chose to rely on the active development of its ties with the Arab world, especially against the backdrop of the Chinese economy experiencing an ever growing demand for massive hydrocarbon imports. Oil would traditionally be a vital link in the ties that connected the United States and the Middle East up until the point when Washington chose to reduce its dependence on Middle East oil by betting big on the shale oil bonanza at home. However, China has a massive growing economy that needs more and more oil, which creates positive preconditions for the establishment of economic with one of the most oil rich regions of the world. Additionally, by nurturing its ties with the Arab world Beijing can effectively contain US influence in the Middle East, making the Arab world prone to listen to any of its demands . For China has become the biggest consumer of Saudi, Iraqi and Iranian oil in the world, which allows it to influence the positions occupied by the three of these very different states.
Therefore, one of the proposals of President Xi Jinping at the Beijing Forum was the intensification of joint work with Arab countries in the oil and gas sector, which will allow Arab manufacturers to increase the supply of hydrocarbon products to China, which looks extremely promising against Beijing’s plans to import 8 trillion dollars worth of oil over the next five years.
It’s must be noted that even before the announcement of Washington’s trading wars, China would be searching for a suitable solution of the puzzle of its own energy security, trying to find a balance in its relations with the United States. To attain this gold Beijing increased its import of American times by four times in less than a month last February, thus breaking a promise made earlier in Moscow to strengthen energy cooperation with Russia. Then, in the month of May, it became known that Beijing was planning to further increase the level of oil imports from the US, which Beijing announced in clear hopes of satisfying the White House that was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the state of Sino-American trade. But soon it became clear that no amount of concessions can satisfy Washington, which resulted in China rapidly dropping the amount of oil it was buying form the US.
Therefore, the call made by China at the Forum for expanding cooperation with the Arab world should be perceived as Beijing’s direct response to Washington’s actions. Moreover, now China is strengthening its influence across the whole planet, and the Arab world is no exception. Beijing is interested in Middle Eastern resources, but it will not be shortsighted enough to overlook the fact that this region represents a vast uncharted market for its goods and investments.
According to the Beijing elites, China and the Arab world have many reasons to pursue the development of various forms of cooperation. Speaking at the opening of the above mentioned forum, Xi Jinping, in his manner, presented a clear plan of actions. First, Beijing and the Arab countries are to start developing a broad infrastructure system that will link the whole region, building ports, logistics centers, and high-speed railway lines. In recent years, Beijing has succeeded in becoming a leading economic partner of a number of Arab and African countries, now it has a goal of linking them together in its mind.
It’s curious that among the members of the League of Arab States there are such African countries as Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan, and it was Djibouti that Beijing chose to establish its first overseas military base.
Further still, China is planing to start investing even more in both African and Arab countries this year. China’s Xi Jinping has announced that the country he leads is going to allocate some 20 billion dollars in loans to the countries of the region, while handing over additional 106 million dollars in financial assistance to stimulate economic growth. In particular, China will provide 15 million dollars in financial assistance to Palestine, along with 91 million dollars in aid to the four countries of the region that have recently suffered from armed conflicts the most, namely Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria.
To bring all of the above mentioned plans to life, an Arab-Chinese consortium of banks is going to be create with a total worth of well over 3 billion dollars. According to the Chinese leader, loans and assistance are provided within the framework of the “oil and gas +” model for the economic revitalization of the Middle East region and development of its ties with the what is still believed to be the second economy of the world.
But China’s growing ties with the Middle East are not limited to commercial and financial activities. Beijing intensifies diplomatic ties and increases its military presence across the Middle East. The Chinese navy has made efforts to demonstrate its presence in close proximity to such strategic regional points as the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Suez Canal. China has also signed an agreement on the opening of a new facility in Saudi Arabia that will be producing military unmanned aerial vehicles.
Although it is unlikely that Beijing will be able to completely remove Washington from the regional stage in the nearest future, since the latter remains a principle arms supplier of the region, the imminent economic growth of the region will create new markets for the inexpensive Chinese high-tech weapons systems, while further stimulating China’s determination to drive both research and production costs even lower. However, according to some experts, China’s readiness to sell weapons to virtually any regional playing, without taking into account its intentions, can make the situation across the Middle East even more volatile, by providing countries with the means to wage modern wars on the cheap.
Against the backdrop of mounting tensions in the Middle East and in US relations with China, Washington simply can not ignore Beijing’s rapid advancement in the region. If Washington fails to come up with a plan, China will soon be able to realize its ambitions in the region by including the Middle East in the orbit of its economic and diplomatic influence, thus completely removing Washington from the region.
