Category: China-Middle East

Chinese Mideast specialists were quicker than usual in weighing in on Friday's Persian Gulf deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Broadly speaking, most scholars attributed China's success in finalizing the agreement to President Xi Jinping's commitment to "personal diplomacy" since 2014 ...

There wasn't a huge response on Chinese social media to the news that Beijing facilitated the restoration of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran given that it's a pretty esoteric topic for most people.  Nonetheless, there was some discussion on ...

Publicly, the White House says it supports anything that "de-escalates tensions" in the Mideast. Privately, there's probably a lot more teeth-gnashing going on in the corridors of the National Security Council (NSC.) This is because the deal gives China a huge diplomatic win while also bolstering Washington's ...

Conservative U.S. lawmakers and the right-wing media reacted strongly to the news that China had brokered a restoration of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia on Friday, blaming President Joe Biden for what they say is more evidence of the administration's failed foreign policy:

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's visit to China earlier this month, when he met with his counterpart Xi Jinping, drew a lot of international attention. However, Chinese experts differ sharply from their international counterparts on what was achieved. Commentators in China, not ...

Following President Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia late last year, many speculated that China was aiming to replace the U.S. in the region, not least because U.S.-Saudi relations are currently quite frosty. However, the China-Middle East expert Andrea Ghiselli recently ...

So much of the international news coverage of Xi Jinping's three-day visit last week to Saudi Arabia was framed in the context of the broader U.S.-China rivalry. The Saudis and other Arab states, according to the prevailing narrative, were pivoting away ...

Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia last week and his participation in three summits with Arab leaders went precisely according to plan. The President was feted lavishly by the Saudi royal family while seeming to rise above the region's often toxic politics.

While Chinese government spokespeople have called President Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia ‘epoch-making,’ they’ve been a lot vaguer about the agenda for his meetings.  However, Tang Tianbo, a researcher at the Middle East Institute of the ...

The China-Middle East expert Jonathan Fulton complained on Twitter this week that many editors at major Western news outlets seem to have pre-decided their framing of Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Rather than focusing on what the two countries want and where they’re coming ...