DOHA: The Arab world has remained a “black hole” in the Chinese strategy for a long time, the ‘Arab World and China Conference’ at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel was told yesterday.
“Observers’ opinions over Chinese strategy are divided. Some deny that China has a grand strategy, while others believe China, like any other major power, has a global strategy.
“Agreeing with this, a third group sees that China has a grand strategy but it is ambiguous and unclear,” said Kadhim Niama, Editor of International Studies journal and Director, Center for International Studies at Baghdad University.
The release of ‘Chinese Arab Policy Paper’ in January this year stirred more debate over the content of the strategy which came ambiguous and general in many aspects, said Niama who presented a paper entitled ‘The Arab world within China’s global strategy’, at the conference titled ‘The Arab World and China: Future Prospects of Relations with a Rising Power’.
The strategy deals with Arab governments, not peoples, addresses common economic interests and cooperation, undermining support for human rights and democracy, he added.
The two-day conference brought together more than 40 researchers from China, the Arab world and beyond to discuss 30 research papers focusing on the world’s changing political and economic landscape and its effects on Arab-Sino relations.
The first session of the conference saw discussions on the Chinese strategy towards Arab, Arab’s status with the strategy and China’s approaches and policies towards the Arab Spring, and, more specifically, towards the Syrian crisis.
China’s strategy towards Arab countries is based on principles that include respect of sovereignty, integrity of territories, non-intervention, pursuit of political and peaceful solutions of conflicts, and the Chinese Veto regarding the current Syrian crisis should be seen in this context, said Wu Bingbing, Senior Research Fellow at Institute for International and Strategic Studies (IISS) at Peking University.
In his paper, Bingbing underlined that China’s strategy and policies in Arab World are built on common interests — political and economic and security cooperation — to fight extremism and terrorism, in addition to cultural interests enhancing dialogue of civilisations.
China’s view of the Arab World developed through stages from a region exporting ideology and revolutions to one promoting geo-economic and energy security, enhancing investment and guaranteeing markets for Chinese trade.
“With the booming economy of China, the Arab region has became more vital for China and its policy has changed to geopolitical one translated into soft military presence in the region to protect its economic interests,” said Rabeh Zaghouni, Lecturer in International Relations at Guelma University, Algeria.
China uses its soft military presence in Somali waters and is likely to build logistic military base in Djibouti, in addition to its participation in UN peacekeeping missions temporarily aiming at protecting its practical interests, but not to influence governments of the region, said Degang Sun, Professor at the Middle East Studies Institute, Shinghai, China. So far China does not need hard military bases in the Middle East as China perceives the region as a “market”, he added.
China is the second largest trade partner of the GCC states after the European Union and will be ranked first in the coming couple of years, said Timothy Niblock, Emeritus Professor of Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter.
He underlined the importance of placing GCC states into the wider network of cooperation and coordination which China is building across Central Asia and over the Indian Ocean. He said that this network includes roads, rail lines and oil pipelines aiming to link China and Europe in a vast Eurasian trading system with offshoots to other Asian countries and parts of Africa.
