China in the middle ground between Middle Eastern rivals

EAST ASIA FORUM

In December 2021, United States intelligence claimed China was helping Saudi Arabia develop ballistic missiles. Washington feared the Saudis were abandoning them in pursuit of a closer partnership with China. For some US policymakers, this pointed to the growing threat of China displacing the United States as the principal external power in the Middle East.

Such fears were — and still are — overblown. Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states account for a larger proportion of China’s economic relations in the Middle East than Iran. In 2020, China’s trade with Saudi Arabia was worth US$65.2 billion — compared to its trade with Iran of US$14.36 billion — and that gap is growing. But this has not led to any change in Chinese efforts to displace the United States as the dominant global power in the region.

Yet even if China wishes to remain aloof from tensions in the Middle East, it has found it difficult to do so. Non-alignment will only get harder if the underlying rivalries are exacerbated to the point where a regionwide conflict takes place. China has pursued commercial relationships with states across the region, while also recognising the tensions between them, which it has acknowledged mainly through the use of rhetoric.

China notably used the Global Security Initiative to encourage Middle Eastern countries to create their own regional security architecture — making it clear that it favoured any security initiative to come from inside the region without the involvement of outside forces. This was a tacit rejection of the United States’ presence, but there is little indication that China wants to take on a more active role as a conflict mediator between Saudi Arabia and Iran, or use the position of one against the other.

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