After nearly two years of preparation, the first summit between China and the League of Arab States will be held in Saudi Arabia. China claims that this summit will become an important milestone in the history of Sino-Arab relations.
Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that the summit is expected to be held on December 9. During the summit, Chinese leader Xi Jinping will visit Saudi Arabia. It is a sensitive period when the relationship between the two countries has fallen into a trough due to energy supply disputes.
Although relevant officials have revealed to the media that Xi Jinping will set off for a visit to the Middle East this month, it is not yet clear whether he will not make this trip for any reason, and Chinese and Saudi officials have not made a final official announcement.
Arab diplomats told Reuters that Saudi Arabia has sent invitations to the Middle East and North African leaders for the Sino-Arab gathering, and many Arab leaders are expected to attend.
Energy, infrastructure, ideology, are China and the Middle East similar?
In recent years, with the rapid rise of China, its economic and diplomatic influence in the Middle East has also increased significantly. When the United States seems to be fading out of the Middle East and drifting away from traditional partners such as Saudi Arabia, this oil-rich region countries have increasingly close relations with China.
At present, China has become the largest trading partner of the Arab countries and the largest foreign investor. Last year, the bilateral trade volume between the Arab world and China reached more than 300 billion US dollars, an increase of more than one third compared with the previous year. In addition, there are 20 A Middle Eastern country signed a “Belt and Road” cooperation document with China.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a report on China-Arab cooperation on Thursday (December 1), saying that China has established 12 pairs of strategic partnerships with Arab countries at the bilateral level. In addition, China also intends to take the convening of the first China-Arab summit as an opportunity , and build what China calls the “China-Arab Community of Shared Future” with Arab countries.
“So far, China has been quite successful in developing relations with divided parties in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran.” Gaidalia, director of the Asia Policy Program at the Abba Eban Institute of International Diplomacy at Israel’s Rehman University Gedaliah Afterman said.
The former diplomat at the Australian embassy in Beijing said that the two sides are expected to seek more economic and trade cooperation agreements at the China-Arab States summit, including the possible signing of a free trade agreement between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. “This summit, if it is held at all, is unique because for the first time the two sides view their relationship as strategic,” he said in an email to VOA.
For China, while oil and gas supplies are still important, the opportunities offered by the GCC countries are much greater, especially in areas such as infrastructure development, he said. And for the GCC countries, China in many ways fits right in with their vision for the future: “Unlike any other player, China has the unique ability to act as a long-term partner, buying their oil, building their cities, providing the technologies that make them smart and helping them diversify their economies to green energy.”
John Calabrese, a professor at American University and director of the Middle East-Asia Program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, a think tank, said there was also ideological sympathy. There is no doubt that China’s form of government is of course different from the Gulf states’ monarchies, but “broadly speaking, these governments have broadly similar authoritarian characteristics,” he said.
He told VOA: “And, from a Western perspective on the human rights record and the political process, a common position shared by China and most Middle Eastern countries and governments is to counter Western criticism and public condemnation of the human rights record .”
The way to balance competition and cooperation among great powers
The strong presence of the United States in the Middle East can be traced back to World War II. At that time, President Roosevelt established close partnerships with major powers such as Saudi Arabia. Since then, the Middle East has been one of the regions where the United States has invested the most strategic resources for more than 70 years. The United States has also consistently held a dominant position in the region that is second to none. However, with the rapid rise of China and the gradual shift of the global economic center of gravity to the Asia-Pacific region, the United States has adjusted its national strategy since the Obama administration, shifting the focus of its security strategy from counter-terrorism to the Asia-Pacific region.
Relations between Washington and some longtime allies have been at their lowest point in recent years over oil production and its stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In October of this year, OPEC+, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, ignored the warnings of the Biden administration and insisted on cutting production to increase global oil prices. This was considered to have actually funded Russia’s war in Ukraine and exacerbated inflation. The international organization composed of major oil-producing countries includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and other America’s most staunch allies in the Middle East. Biden and many U.S. lawmakers have recently separately warned that the U.S. may reconsider U.S.-Saudi security relations if Riyadh does not cooperate.
U.S. officials have warned Saudi leaders that cutting oil output would be seen as Riyadh’s explicit choice to side with Russia in the Ukraine war, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. U.S. officials called Saudi Arabia and other major Gulf oil producers urgently to delay the decision to cut production for another month, but were rebuffed, according to people familiar with the matter.
Senior White House Middle East officials have recently made it clear that relations with China will hamper security cooperation between Washington and its Middle Eastern partners. “Certain partnerships with China add a ceiling on what we can do,” Brett McGurk, the White House Middle East coordinator, told a security panel in Bahrain.
Bloomberg reported at the end of last year that the UAE and the United States had suspended a military purchase of F-35 fighter jets due to China issues, which involved a value of up to 23 billion U.S. dollars. The Biden administration has pressured the UAE to remove Huawei from its telecommunications network within the next four years and take other steps to distance itself from China, the report said.
Earlier, the “Wall Street Journal” also reported that China attempted to secretly build a suspected military facility at a port in the United Arab Emirates. According to people familiar with the matter, the work has been suspended after several rounds of meetings and visits by U.S. officials.
Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for defense policy, recently noted that China’s involvement in communications networks could create cyber vulnerabilities for the United States, and that its presence in certain countries in the region could allow them to pose a threat to U.S. national security to monitor the U.S. military. A report by the US news site Axios last month said Carr, speaking at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, expressed the Biden administration’s concerns about China’s growing influence in the Middle East, warning: “ Raising the ceiling too much with Beijing lowers the ceiling with the U.S.”
Lumley of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that the expansion of China’s influence in the Middle East is not only in the fields of energy and economy and trade, but also increasingly in the field of security cooperation. China, he said, sees an emerging market and an opportunity not only to advance its own arms sales and security cooperation, but also potentially undercut the traditional security partnerships the United States has with some countries.
Lumley, who has served in two administrations of Trump and Biden, cited the example that the United States has been reluctant to sell armed drones to countries in the region, but China has entered this market and sold the CH-4 to Iraq. , selling pterosaur drones to Egypt and the UAE, and China’s armed drones have basically flooded the Middle East market.
But on the other hand, Lumley also pointed out that he does not think that China intends to “replace the United States as the main security guarantor”. China mainly has economic reasons and hopes to promote the development of China’s own defense industry. alternative options.
The Middle East expert said that given the complexities of modern economies, it is unrealistic for the United States to expect the Middle East or the rest of the world to choose between its relationship with us and its relationship with China, and it is imperative for the United States to correctly identify And explain the risks of deepening relations with China and the risks that may arise in relations with the United States.
He said: “There are many countries whose security relationship points to the United States, but their economic relationship points to China. Therefore, it is not easy to judge the situation in the middle of the Venn diagram, but the United States still needs to explain to them that deepening the relationship with China Where are the risks to the economy and even the security relationship, and what that means for the future relationship with the United States.”
Although many people from all walks of life often point out that China’s growing influence in the Middle East region may undoubtedly harm the interests of the United States in many ways, but the turbulent and complex international relations also make the United States and China in the Middle East region. not exactly in opposition.
China is the No. 1 economic player in the region, while the U.S. remains the region’s biggest security provider, but “these two roles are not inherently antagonistic or mutually exclusive,” said Calabrice of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank. .
Lumley, a former Middle East policy adviser to the Office of the Secretary of Defense of the United States, said that the United States’ efforts to balance relations with the Gulf countries will undoubtedly become more and more complicated, but “the China-Arab summit and the strengthening of economic ties between them are not necessarily At the expense of America.”