JSTOR DAILY - MARCH 2017
A visit
by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to China in mid-March marks China’s
increasing involvement in the Middle East. In recent decades, China has
moved toward superpower status, building economic alliances and making
investments around the world.
A few years ago Massoud Hayoun examined the beginnings of a deep Chinese engagement in the Middle East,
and the tensions between the new international focus and the Asian
giant’s attitudes about pluralism and tolerance at home. Hayoun writes
that China began a big push toward involvement in the Arab and Muslim
world after the 9/11 attacks. Chinese diplomats contrasted their desire
to engage with the Middle East against an image of the United States as
Islamophobic and imperialistic.
Between 2005 and 2009, Hayoun writes, China nearly doubled its
exports to the Middle East. In 2010 it surpassed the U.S. as the biggest
exporter to the region. It’s also become the largest buyer of Middle
Eastern oil. As China increased its economic engagement with
majority-Muslim nations, it has made gestures toward supporting its
Muslim minority at home. Hayoun describes visiting the site of a mosque
being built in the city of Guangzhou in 2010, paid for mostly by local
officials with some support from Muslim workers in the area. He writes
that a Guangzhou official indicated the project was less about the
religious needs of the city’s Muslim residents than it was a way “to
welcome China’s international Muslim neighbors, including the major
exporters of natural gas and oil, like Kazakhstan, to the Asian Games
being held in the city that November.”
China has also used its Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a
predominantly Muslim area, as the setting for a meeting with Arab state
leaders. The visitors could watch traditional ethnic Uighur dancing, eat
local halal cuisine, and view exhibits on Chinese Muslim culture.
And yet, even while making these overtures to the Muslim world, the
Chinese government has committed human rights violations against its
Muslim minorities. One teacher told Hayoun that local authorities had
instructed teachers to force-feed their Muslim Uighur students during
the Ramadan fast in 2010. And human rights organizations reported that
Chinese officials prevented minors from attending mosques with their
parents.
China’s checkered reputation sometimes hurts its work in the Middle
East. For example, the Chinese-funded Algerian East-West Highway project
and Grand Mosque of Algiers came under fire from local press in
Algeria. In part, that was a result of reported mismanagement and
bounced checks to local subcontractors, but it also reflected larger
issues. As one online commentator to an Algerian paper put it, “Can we
entrust an atheist enterprise from an atheist state that represses its
own Uighur minority in Xinjiang to construct a mosque here in Algeria?”
That’s the kind of question China will face more often as it works to expand its global power.
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