How China's rise is changing the Middle East

175 Pages·2020·2.193 MB·English

by  Niv Horesh, Anoushiravan Ehteshami

How China’s Rise Is Changing the
Middle East
This book explores the extent to which China’s rise is changing the economic,
security, political, and social-c ultural aspects of the Middle East – a region of
significant strategic importance to the West and of increasing importance to the
East. With its growing dependence on Middle East oil and gas, China has more
at stake in this region than any other Asian power and, not surprisingly, has
begun increasing its engagement with the region, with profound implications for
other stakeholders. The book charts the history of China’s links with the Middle
East, discusses China’s involvement with each of the major countries of the
region, considers how China’s rise is reshaping Middle Easterners’ perceptions
of China and the Chinese people, and examines the very latest developments.
Anoushiravan Ehteshami is Professor of International Relations in the School
of Government and International Affairs at Durham University.
Niv Horesh is Visiting Professor of China Studies in the School of Government
and International Affairs at Durham University.
Durham Modern Middle East and Islamic World Series
Series Editor: Anoushiravan Ehteshami
University of Durham
40 Lebanon and the Arab Uprisings
In the Eye of the Hurricane
Edited by Maximilian Felsch and Martin Wählisch
41 The Erasure of Arab Political Identity
Colonialism and Violence
Salam Hawa
42 China’s Presence in the Middle East
The Implications of the One Belt, One Road Initiative
Edited by Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Niv Horesh
43 Afghanistan – Challenges and Prospects
Edited by Srinjoy Bose, Nishank Motwani and William Maley
44 Nuclear Politics in Asia
Edited by Marzieh Kouhi Esfahani and Ariabarzan Mohammadi
45 Transition in Afghanistan
Hope, Despair and the Limits of Statebuilding
William Maley
46 Russia’s Middle East Policy
From Lenin to Putin
Alexey Vasiliev
47 Iran’s Foreign Policy in the South Caucasus
Relations with Azerbaijan and Armenia
Marzieh Kouhi- Esfahani
48 How China’s Rise Is Changing the Middle East
Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Niv Horesh
For a full list of available titles please visit: www.routledge.com/Durham-
Modern-Middle- East-and- Islamic-World-S eries/book- series/SE0526
How China’s Rise Is Changing
the Middle East
Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Niv Horesh
Published in association with the Sheikh Nasser al-M ohammad al-S abah
Programme at Durham University
First published 2020
by Routledge
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© 2020 Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Niv Horesh
The right of Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Niv Horesh to be identified as
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British Library Cataloguing-i n-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-Publication Data
Names: Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, author. | Horesh, Niv, author.
Title: How China’s rise is changing the Middle East / Anoushiravan
Ehteshami and Niv Horesh.
Description: First edition. | London; New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor &
Francis Group, 2020. | Series: Durham modern Middle East and Islamic
world series; 48 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019016741 (print) | LCCN 2019021629 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429288425 (eBook) | ISBN 9781000316391 (Adobe Reader)
| ISBN 9781000336788 (Mobipocket) | ISBN 9781000357172 (ePub3)
| ISBN 9780367255664 | ISBN 9780367255664(hardback) | ISBN
9780429288425(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: China–Foreign relations–Middle East. | Middle East–
Foreign relations–China. | China–Foreign economic relations–Middle East. |
Middle East–Foreign economic relations–China.
Classification: LCC DS740.5.M53 (ebook) | LCC DS740.5.M53 E48 2020
(print) | DDC 327.51056–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016741
ISBN: 978-0-367-25566-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-28842-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 Introduction: China’s Mideast posture in global perspective 1
2 The Chinese–Middle Eastern encounter in broader
historical perspective: from the Han to the Qing dynasty 10
3 China’s presence in the Middle East in the long twentieth
century, 1912–2012 23
4 Eyeing military alliance? Sino-I ranian mutual strategic
perceptions leading onto the Trump era 46
5 Chinese strategic perceptions of Saudi Arabia 85
6 A model for self-d evelopment? Egyptian perceptions of
China since 2012 101
7 Our ‘new best friend’? Turkish perceptions of China
since 2012 119
8 The PRC’s slowly improving relations with Israel 135
9 Conclusion: China is changing the world and with it the
Middle East 150
Index 157
Acknowledgements
The completion of this book would not have been possible without the support
and dedication of a small army of colleagues. So, we would like to thank
colleagues who had been involved in the Nottingham–Durham programme for
the study of China’s presence in the Middle East, not least those who we could
not meet face-to-face: John Garver and Christina Lim. First rate research assis-
tance was provided by Xu Ruike, Amjed Rasheed and several other colleagues
based in the region and elsewhere who requested anonymity. In Beijing, friendly
assistance was provided by Wang Suolao. Administrative support by Lorraine
Holmes and the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham
University is particularly noteworthy. We also extend our warmest thanks to the
reviewers of the manuscript and their helpful feedback on the original text and
hope that the changes meet with their approval. And last, but not least, we are
very grateful to the editorial and production teams at Routledge and those
contracted by Routledge for getting us to this point. Their encouragement and
professionalism provided us with all the necessary motivation to finish the book
on time.
It should be clear that this book has been an interdisciplinary, multi-
dimensional, multi-lingual, and ‘multi-space’ research project, which has proved
to be a most rewarding operational and intellectual challenge for us to manage,
so while we have done everything in our power to provide a full and fluid
account of our research activities, we should note that any weaknesses in the
book are those of the authors only, as we could not have asked for a more com-
petent and supportive group of allies and supporters. In the same vein, we must
note that we took the decision to use a mixed referencing method in order to pre-
serve the integrity and authenticity of the multitude of multilingual primary
sources accessed and used, and to reveal the eclectic aspects of the research, and
thus present these as accessibly as possible. So, while adopting the Harvard ref-
erencing system for our wide range of secondary and more easily accessible
sources we also used endnotes in combination with this.
Anoush Ehteshami and Niv Horesh
June 2019
1 Introduction
China’s Mideast posture in global
perspective
On 7 April 2017, President Trump’s then five- year-old granddaughter serenaded
President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan with a popular Chinese folk
song during their visit at the Mar-a -Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. On
the same day, over dinner, Trump reportedly disclosed to Xi the fact that the
US had just rained down missiles on the Syrian army in response to its use of
chemical weapons on civilians, children included.1 That the Syrian crisis should
feature centre stage, even if for a fleeting moment, during Xi’s first state visit
to the United States speaks to the rising significance of the Middle East in the
larger scheme of Sino- American relations. There is broad scholarly consensus,
in turn, that the nature of Sino-A merican relations overall is destined to shape
the twenty-fi rst century.2
As an emerging economic superpower, post- Mao China’s global imprint
has attracted much scholarly attention. The debate is no longer about whether
China will trump the United States as the world’s largest economy this century,
but about when it is likely to do so. Sure, there are differences of opinion about
the methodology of the numbers and issues relating to the ‘middle-i ncome
trap’ that China might be becoming caught in, but most commentators expect
China to overcome its domestic debt crisis, remaining structural problems in its
production chains, institutional corruption, and even its testing environmental
problems to emerge as world leader. Of course, global leadership will of
necessity require political changes, liberalization, at home, which will test the
governing system to its limits. But a stable economy and continuing social
prosperity can arguably allow for the necessary changes to allow China to
manage positioning itself as the leader of the post-A merican order. Focus
on China has also spun much interest in China’s global role and economic,
political, and cultural footprint.
However, curiously, studies of China’s presence in the Middle East remain
far outweighed by the literature on Chinese engagement with Africa, Latin
America, Central, South, and Southeast Asia.3 Despite China’s rapidly changing
energy profile in the 1990s and shifts in its interest in Central and West Asia,
scholarly research on China’s role and policies towards the western side of
Asia remained thin. While literature on China’s Middle East/West Asia role
has grown since the 2000s, coverage now appears to be driven by energy, the
2 Introduction: China’s Mideast posture
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), or superpower politics. There still exists an
imbalance, we feel. So, this book is aimed at correcting this imbalance, on three
levels. Hailing as we do from different personal and disciplinary backgrounds,
we seek to, first, explore the extent to which contemporary Chinese policy vis-à -
vis the Middle East is different to the one obtaining during the Mao era (1949–
1976). We then seek to uncover the economic rationale underpinning China’s
presence in the Middle East at present. And finally, but most importantly, we
seek to explain how China’s economic brawn might be changing perceptions
of China across the region, as well as Chinese perceptions of the region. This
is therefore a book preoccupied with soft power just as much as it aims to
strategically construe the meaning of Middle Eastern internal rivalries to the
global competition among the big global powers.
As one might well expect to find in a study about a region as troubled as
the Middle East, we will of course mention in passing oil output and trade-
volume figures in addition to hoary facts about arms sales and military conflicts.
However, these dimensions of China’s presence in the Middle East have
been addressed in discrete studies elsewhere.4 Where we believe this volume
makes for an original, holistic, and extensive contribution to the literature is in
providing a wide- angle yet historically framed snapshot of elite attitudes to do
with China’s presence in the Middle East based on primary sources from Iran,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, and – of course – China itself.
Before we leave the floor to voices from China and the region, we will
recapitulate in the next chapter the history of China’s engagement in the Middle
East. Our introductory chapter will consider the past sediments that sometimes
colour, if not impact on, Chinese strategic thinking about the Middle East. The
chapter will start by identifying the overt as well as subterranean narratives
that have carried over from China’s pre-m odern and late-I mperial era into the
Republican era (1912–1949). Then it will aim at highlighting the extent to which
these narratives informed the Middle East policy of the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) in the Mao Zedong era (1949–1976), post- Mao era (1976–2012),
and under the current order, headed by President Xi Jinping (2012–).
The main argument put forward in the following pages is that, while
historical factors might perhaps help explain tactical continuity in Chinese
rhetoric in relation to the Middle East across different periods, Chinese
approaches to the region have been primarily reshaped since the early 1990s by
virtue of external exigency. The end of the Cold War and China’s increasingly
acute energy dependency in the twenty-fi rst century have played a significant
role in shaping China’s approach to the Middle East and North Africa region.
Systemic change and domestic conditions, in other words, combined to bring
China closer to the western borders of Asia. China is no stranger to the Middle
East, however. Indeed, Chinese prestige in the region was at a high point
following the 1955 Bandung Conference, but it soon plummeted through much
of the remaining Mao era. That is to say, with a momentary exception in South
Yemen,5 China was never able to usurp significant geostrategic space in the
Middle East from either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold
Introduction: China’s Mideast posture 3
War. Notably, Chinese rapprochement with Washington in the early 1970s took
two more decades to translate into a major thaw with two of the region’s key
players, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Finally, we watch with great concern the prospects of further conflict as the
deepening of civil unrest and political instability across the region coinciding
with the global competition between the USA and China. Both have strategic
interests in this region, and it is the sub-r egion of the Persian Gulf in particular
– for its hydrocarbons deposits and geopolitical weight – which has been
singled out as a potential theatre of competition for the two global giants. So
we will try to extrapolate Chinese strategic choices into the next few decades,
with particular focus on the ways and means by which China might wish to re-
position itself vis-à -vis Russia and Iran, on the one hand, and the USA, Israel,
and Saudi Arabia, on the other.
This first chapter is then followed by a series of case studies spanning what
we identified as the key sets of bilateral relations that would shape the future
of China’s posture in the Middle East in the decades to come. By default, these
are also set to impact on the quality of US–China relations more broadly: Sino-
Iranian, Sino- Saudi, Sino-E gyptian, Sino- Turkish, and Sino-I sraeli relations.
In the final chapter, we weave together our respective findings for each set of
bilateral relations into what we believe will be the most likely course of Chinese
engagement in the region in the Xi Jinping era (2012–), with particular focus on
his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
This study thereby skirts the Maghreb Arab countries and Sudan, not least
because they are fairly well covered in the extensive literature on Sino-A frican
relations.6 Nevertheless, the literature about the Maghreb resonates with
much of the same themes that emanate from our case studies, such as Chinese
preoccupation with energy-s ource diversification, Arab admiration at China’s
economic achievements at home alongside anxiety at the growing trade deficits
with China. As will be shown later, Egypt is the only country where the
discourse on China is largely devoid of such anxiety.
In that sense, our project builds on – but also goes well beyond – Zambelis
and Gentry’s pertinent study, published back in 2008. We agree that some
thought leaders in the Arab world may still look to contemporary China as ‘a
successful political and economic development model worthy of emulation’,
and that these positive sentiments may stem in no small measure from ‘nostalgic
feelings of solidarity dating back to the height of Arab nationalism and China’s
preeminent role bolstering international Third World solidarity and anticolonial
movements’.7 We also agree that these sentiments prevail despite the fact that
strategic concerns are driving Beijing’s regional policies rather than ideological
commitments. However, we critically point to another key strand of the China
discourse that is prevalent not just in the Arab world, but also in Iran, Turkey,
and Israel – one that is deeply suspicious of Chinese strategic motives and
concerned at China’s economies of scale.
There are other notable differences that situate the Maghreb, North and South
Sudan outside the remit of our study. First, China did not have substantive direct