5.6 China: The “C” in BRICs
5.6.3 China’s soft power in the Middle East
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Investment flows from China have grown tenfold, from $1 billion in 2005 to $11 billion in 2009;
China is the largest foreign investor in both Iraq and Iran. Middle Eastern governments have also reached out by bringing Chinese contractors in to work on major infrastructure project investments.
Saudi Arabia hired the state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation to work on the Mecca monorail project, which went into operation in November 2010, just in time to accommodate the 2.8 million people who arrived for Hajj. Egypt has also partnered with China to develop its Suez special economic zone, and the Iraqi government awarded five separate contracts to Chinese oil companies to develop its long-neglected oil fields. In addition, China signed an agreement with the Iranian government to build a railway line from Tehran to the Iraqi border as part of an overall plan to link the Middle East to Central Asia and China through rail. Chinese influence is also evident in Northern Africa, where the Algerian government hired Chinese construction firms for several major projects including an airport, a mall, 60,000 homes, and a 745-mile east-west highway, the longest on the continent. (Chen, 2011, p.2)
Similarly, the United Arab Emirates has become a significant trading partner of China. Over 1,000 Chinese firms are operating in the UAE and Dubai is the host city of the Dragon Mart, a 150,000 square metre mall selling a variety of Chinese goods (Alterman, 2009). China is a major supplier of Iran’s arms and ammunitions. Between 1998 and 2004, Iran purchased anti-ship missiles and air surveillance radars from China. Iran also purchased Chinese weapons parts which Iran assembled locally. There is also growing suspicion regarding China’s assistance towards the Iranian nuclear programme (Alterman, 2009).
China’s policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states has benefited the Asian powerhouse in its relations with the Middle Eastern countries. Unlike the other great powers which have a relatively small influence in the oil-rich region, China appears to be the only state that has cordial relations with all four of the major ethnic groups in the region – Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Jews. Regimes that have strained relationship with the West over their human rights records find friendship with China (Chen, 2011). China has also engaged the Middle East through multilateral arrangements like the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council. This has provided the platform for China to promote trade and investment with member states of these organisations and seldom promotes China’s strategic interests (Chen, 2011).
The Middle Eastern governments generally find the Chinese model more appealing than the Western model. The Chinese model is popular among the Iranian conservative leaders and , former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani contested the 2005 presidential election with the promise of institutionalising the Chinese model in Iran (Gill & Huang, 2006). Various opinion polls have shown that ordinary people in the Middle East view China in a more positive light
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than the United States. Polls like the Arab Youth Survey carried out by a public relations agency in Dubai in 2009, the BBC World Service Opinion Poll in 2010, Pew Global Attitude Project Surveys from 2005, and Brookings Arab Public Opinion Poll in 2010 show that China has a higher level of favourability in the Middle East than the United States (Chen, 2011). A major reason for the negative image of the United States in this region stems from its foreign policy, its war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq and its drone attacks in this region. With the growing influence of China in this region, the dragon has sought to promote its culture and language through the establishment of Confucius Institutes across the region. Confucius Institutes have been established in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Iran and UAE (Chen, 2011).
With the rise of China’s influence in this region, there is growing concern in Washington over a region which has been of strategic interest to the United States and in which it has established a somewhat hegemonic posture since the United Kingdom influence in the region plummeted.
China has thwarted the United States’ attempt to put an end to the regime of President Assad of Syria and it has also frustrated United States’ efforts to impose sanctions on Iran. China has emerged as Iran’s largest trade partner following the United States sanctions on Iran. China has benefitted enormously from the international sanctions on Iran by extending its bilateral trade with Iran most especially in the energy sector. Iran accounts for a large share of the oil China imports from the Middle East and this explains why China is unwilling to participate in the United States sanctions on Iran.64 Within three years the volume of trade between China and Iran grew from $14.4 billion to $21.2 billion (Abisellan, 2012, p. 6).
Through the projection of its soft power currencies in the Middle East, the Chinese government sought to achieve two major objectives: firstly, to guarantee the supply of energy to its burgeoning economy, and secondly, to weaken the United States influence in the region (Abisellan, 2012). China’s economy has witnessed remarkable growth for three decades and a half and there have been predictions by various agencies that the Asian powerhouse will continue in this direction in the foreseeable future. The Middle East, with its large reservoir of oil, is of strategic and economic importance to China to sustain its economic growth. However, the United States is the most important foreign player in this region. Therefore, China seeks to minimise the influence of the United States in order to boost its bargaining power in the Middle East. These
64 An interview with Chinese scholar 2
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objectives have the potential to catapult China into the position of a major player in the Middle East. In 2010, China purchased close to 4.8 million barrels of crude oil daily. At more than 2.2 million the Middle East accounted for 47 percent of the China’s oil importation that year.
Africa’s share was 30 percent, the Asia-Pacific recorded 4 percent and the remaining 20 percent came from other countries (Abisellan, 2012, p. 5).
According to Alterman (2009) China has only shown an interest in playing a role in the Middle East along with the United States and does not appear to wish to oust the United States as the dominant power in the region. China’s non-military engagement in the region implies that China still relies on the United States military to guarantee the stability of the region for free flow of oil to other parts of the world including China.China’s primary aim in its relations with the Middle Eastern countries is to pursue its economic interests. In doing this, it tries to establish diplomatic and cultural links with the countries in the Middle East. The Middle Eastern countries seem to view China as an alternative great power to the United States (Alterman, 2009). Several Middle Eastern countries have had long established relationships with the United States. A century ago the United States was viewed as a messiah that could liberate the countries in this region from European colonialism. However, the view has changed over the years and America is now itself viewed as an imperial power which seeks to impose reform in the Middle Eastern countries.
China is seen in more positive light owing to its indifference to the internal politics of the Middle Eastern countries (Abisellan, 2012). China is not concerned about how elections are conducted, the human rights record, the level of transparency, the level of corruption and other good governance indicators in the Middle East. Indeed China has provided a model that does not take the values of human rights, and democracy seriously and seems to follow a pragmatic path to economic development (Abisellan, 2012).
China’s aid and assistance have also significantly contributed to the bolstering of China’s soft power in the Arab world. For instance, China has offered assistance to Yemen in the health sector. In the last four decades, over 2,000 Chinese medical experts had been sent to Yemen to supplement the shortage of physicians in the Middle Eastern country (Alterman, 2009). China has also used education to win the minds and hearts of the Middle Eastern public. According to Alterman (2009) around 1,500 Egyptian college students study Chinese yearly and about 1,000 Egyptians are enrolled in university study at the Chinese Cultural Centre and the Egypt-China
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Friendship Association. The Chinese influence is having a considerable effect on Egyptian universities. Ain Shams University prides itself on having the largest Chinese department in Africa; hundreds of Chinese students enroll in Al-Azhar; the Cairo University inaugurated Chinese department in 2004, and the Egyptian Chinese University in Cairo is the first of its kind in the Middle East (Alterman, 2009). The Saudi students have opportunities to enrol in Chinese universities with scholarships which are awarded by the Chinese Multinational Corporation in Saudi Arabia. This is supplemented by scholarships awarded by the Chinese government to students and professionals (Alterman, 2009).
Realising the asymmetry in trade between China and the Middle East that is massively skewed in China’s favour, one of the ways by which China has striven to manage this imbalance is the promotion of tourism in the region. Accordingly, China and Egypt signed an agreement on tourism in 2001 and by 2005 35,000 Chinese tourists had visited Egypt and it is expected that the numbers of Chinese tourists in Egypt will continue to increase. The Chinese tourists in Dubai grew exponentially between 2004 and 2006 largely due to the launch of direct flights by Emirates Airlines between the two countries (Alterman, 2009). Through its Al-Sinal-Yawn, an Arabic edition of its monthly magazine titled China Today, the Asian power has endeavoured to project its soft power. The regional office of this magazine is situated in Cairo and the content is targeted at the Arab audience (Alterman, 2009). Every issue of the magazine has a section entitled “We are all East”. This section seeks to reveal the commonalities between the Arab countries and China with the hope that China will be seen in a positive light if the Arab audience is convinced of such similarities (Alterman, 2009). Table 5 below gives an indication of China’s favourability in the Middle East.
Table 5.6: China’s favourability in the Middle East in 2013
Country Favourable (%)
Lebanon 56
Turkey 27
Palestine 47
Israel 38
Egypt 45
Source: Pew Research Centre 2013
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Table 5.6 shows that the perception of China in the Middle East is not very impressive. The implication of this is that China still needs to invest in soft power in this region to enable it to effectively wield influence in a region where it is difficult to apply hard power resources to achieve set goals.