Are US interests the real target of China’s ‘puzzling’ new partnership with Bahrain?

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Two weeks after China and Bahrain agreed to form a comprehensive strategic partnership (CSP), analysts remain baffled by Beijing’s decision to offer its strongest form of diplomatic alliance to the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom, with some saying the pact is aimed at undermining US interests in the region.

Beijing’s selection of Bahrain, roughly two-thirds the size of Hong Kong and the smallest oil producer in the hydrocarbons-rich Gulf, has confounded leading experts on China’s role in the Middle East and North Africa because it diverges from the pattern of its other CSP partnerships across the region.

…

Whether the new CSP would result in a substantial increase in Chinese trade and investment in Bahrain “is uncertain at this point”, said Guy Burton, author of the book China and Middle East Conflicts: Responding to War and Rivalry from the Cold War to the Present.

Burton said 2018 marked the high point of Chinese investments in the Arab world, which have since slowed down following the Covid-19 pandemic and increased American pressure on its Middle Eastern partners to limit their involvement with China.

…

Burton emphasised that China “isn’t looking to challenge or replace” the US as the Gulf monarchies’ security guarantor against the threat posed by Iran and its “Axis of Resistance” allies like Yemen’s Houthi movement, which has targeted commercial ships in the Red Sea.

Instead, China and the Gulf monarchies had “looked to each other to hedge and diversify their relationships and options”, he said.

…

TO READ THE ARTICLE [PAYWALL], CLICK HERE.