The rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon prompted a strong reaction from the Chinese government this week. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib on Monday at the UN in New York and condemned Israel’s actions as “indiscriminate attacks against civilians.”
It’s notable, though, that neither Wang nor other Chinese officials made any mention of Hezbollah’s missile strikes on targets in Israel, including those that hit civilian areas.
The deteriorating security environment in the Middle East is a critical time for China, which is transitioning from a strategy of “hedging” to one that is increasingly focused on “wedging.”
Jonathan Fulton and Michael Schulman, senior nonresident scholars at The Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., join Eric & Cobus to discuss their new report on China’s Mideast strategy and Beijing’s new regional priorities.
Show Notes:
- The Atlantic Council: China’s Middle East policy shift from “hedging” to “wedging” by Jonathan Fulton and Michael Schulman: https://tinyurl.com/286pyh3o
- Subscribe to The China-MENA Newsletter by Jonathan Fulton: https://chinamenanewsletter.substack.com/
- Subscribe to The China-MENA Podcast on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/256tdywu
About Jonathan Fulton and Michael Fulton:
Jonathan Fulton is a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. He also serves as an associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. An expert on Chinese policy toward the Middle East, Fulton has written widely on the topic for both academic and popular publications. He is the author of China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies and co-editor of External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies. Fulton received his PhD from the University of Leicester, where his dissertation focused on Chinese relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council member states. He also holds degrees from Staffordshire University, the University of Southern Queensland, and Dalhousie University.
Michael Schuman is a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and an author and journalist with more than 25 years of experience in Asia. Currently a contributing writer to The Atlantic, he was previously a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. His most recent book is Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World. His two previous books are Confucius and the World He Created and The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Businessweek, and Bloomberg Opinion. He is based in Beijing, China.
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China Global South Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and, as always, I’m joined by CGSP’s Managing Editor, Cobus van Staden, today from Johannesburg or Cape Town — Johannesburg?
Cobus van Staden: Cape Town.
Eric: Cape Town. Back in Cape Town. Cobus was on the road in Argentina last week. We’ll have an update on that at the very end of the show. Today we’re coming back to the Middle East. We did a show just last week on the Middle East. We’re back to the topic again because of the dramatic events that have been unfolding there in the past few days. Listen, right now, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in New York, attending the UN General Assembly. And the big topic of discussion, of course, at the UN on the Security Council and at the UNGA is what’s happening in Lebanon.
Israel’s military said it launched airstrikes against Hezbollah sites in Lebanon on Monday. Lebanese authorities now say about 492 people have been killed. The Israeli Air Force struck about 1600 targets in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as I mentioned, is in New York. And he went out of his way on Monday to meet with his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. And he condemned Israeli actions in Lebanon, calling them, and I’m quoting here, “indiscriminate attacks against civilians.” Wang’s remarks follow a call for Chinese nationals in Lebanon to evacuate the country immediately. There’s been no indication at this time if the Chinese government is taking any measures to airlift their nationals or to provide any assistance to their nationals to get out of the country.
But in Beijing, foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, addressed the issue at the regular press briefing. Let’s take a listen.
Lin Jian: China follows closely the relevant incidents — opposes any actions violating Lebanon’s sovereignty and security, and is concerned over the potential escalation of regional tensions due to the incidents. China calls on all parties concerned to safeguard peace and stability in the Middle East.
Eric: Now, China’s ambassador to the UN, Fu Cong, he was far less diplomatic in his assessment of the situation. Earlier, he blasted Israeli attacks in Lebanon as “outrageous” and “something unheard of in history.” Now, he made those remarks in Chinese when he addressed the Security Council last week. But on Tuesday, he spoke in English with China State broadcaster, CCTV.
Fu Cong: Yes, we strongly condemn this massive and indiscriminate attacks. This actually is a violation, grave violation of international humanitarian law and shows the total disregard for human life. And we strongly condemn that. And we urge an international independent investigation. And we also see that the situation in Lebanon is still a very volatile and there seems to be an escalation, and we urge all sides to exercise retrain, and we particularly urge Israel not to escalate the situation further and stop the bombing. Thank you.
Eric: Cobus, Fu is calling on Israel to stop the bombing, calling for an independent investigation and condemning Israeli actions. Just as it was with October 7th, though, Fu and other Chinese officials are not mentioning any of the Iranian-backed organizations involved, whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah by name, and they have been noticeably quiet, Cobus, on Hezbollah’s missile attacks in Israel. This raises the question that a lot of people are wondering about as to whether or not we should take Wang and Fu and other Chinese officials seriously when they say they aren’t taking sides in these Middle East conflicts.
Cobus: I think in many ways, China’s choices in these respects, I guess, reflect some of the larger realities of the Middle East conflict, where superpower and engagement is very linked to one side rather than any kind of objective working with all sides. So, in that sense, I guess China’s responding to a kind of a preset reality while at the same time, obviously, knowing where their closest diplomatic ties lie, I assume. But I think also the larger question, I guess, is whether China is interested in the kind of role that outside observers say it should be interested in or it is interested in. Whether China’s real interests are the ones that people assume when they look on the outside. And that’s always the bigger issue with China’s involvement in this region, I think.
Eric: Well, that’s a good segue into our discussion today about what China wants to get out of these various conflicts that are happening in Gaza and now in Lebanon as well. The Atlantic Council published a new report earlier this month — China’s Middle East Policy Shift From Hedging to Wedging, written by our old friend of the show, Jonathan Fulton, who’s a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and also an associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi — And also a new friend of ours to the show, Michael Schuman, who is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, and a contributing writer to the Atlantic, and joins us on the line from Beijing. Michael, Jonathan, a very good afternoon and good evening to you both.
Jonathan Fulton: Thanks guys. Great to be back.
Michael Schuman: Thanks a lot, Eric.
Eric: It’s great to have you. The timing of your report, I mean, it’s awkward to say that it’s perfect, but it is really timely given everything that’s going on. Jonathan, let’s start with you. These latest events in Lebanon are dramatic, and it really is raising concerns about the escalation of the war and potentially reaching into now a much broader Mid East conflict than what we’ve seen over the past year. When you see China’s reactions that we’re hearing from Fu Cong and hearing from Wang Yi and from the foreign ministry in Beijing, where they are condemning the violence, but never saying Hezbollah or Hamas by name, but clearly taking a much more partisan approach, how does this fit into your narrative of hedging and wedging
Jonathan: Well, it fits pretty well, to be honest. I mean, the timing is good. I think the timing has been good for quite a while, to be honest, on this report because Michael and I started working on this, I think we were talking about this back in December of ’23. And it would’ve been evergreen at any point, really, since I think we go back to like 2017 and say you can see evidence of this more hedging behavior. If anything, it’s really proved to be somewhat prescient because there has been a consistent type of engagement from China in the region. It’s been difficult, I think, to be fair for Beijing because I’ve argued for years that China’s primary interest in the Middle East have been economic for a very long time. And when you look at what’s been happening in the region, it very much undermines those interests and it makes a very, very difficult environment for China to try to navigate.
They don’t have a deep pool of China talent in any of their ministries. This is not a region that’s typically been part of their top tier of calculations. So, I think they’re really reacting in real time to a lot of this. And when you look at the response from October 7th onward, I think what you see is just a pretty consistent second-tier response to events that they don’t really have a lot of control over. And I think what they see is that they’ve got more opportunity to try to leverage the relationship on one side than on the Israeli side. You see how they’ve been reacting, like you said, they haven’t named Hezbollah or Hamas in any of their statements. When they’re looking at this, I think they’re saying it’s going to be really, really hard for them to make inroads, whether it’s through their negotiations with the Palestinian groups or their engagement with other non-state actors in the region. They’re not going to be able to make inroads on the Israeli side very easily. I think they made that calculus a long time ago. So, it’s been a very one-sided approach.
Cobus: Michael, I wonder, just linking from Jonathan’s comments, we’ve been talking about hedging and wedging. How do you understand those two concepts? What does hedging and wedging actually mean?
Michael: Well, I think a kind of a simple way of looking at it is that as a hedger, China was building its influence in the Middle East, but not necessarily challenging the U.S. role and U.S. policy in the Middle East, and actually to say capitalizing on that to fly under the radar, so to speak, and increase and strengthen their relationships with countries in the region, expand their economic role, expand their influence, but very much operating within the greater context of what the U.S. was doing. As a wedger, that’s a significant shift to challenging the U.S. much more directly in the Middle East and playing a much more active role in trying to divide the U.S. from its traditional partners there and to involve itself diplomatically in the events of the region.
And taking off on what Jonathan was saying, the approach that you see China taking to the crisis in Lebanon right now, but also it’s going back to October 7th, had been very much a part of that because they’ve been, in my opinion, to use a stronger word, I feel that Beijing’s been exploiting these crises to pursue its greater geopolitical goals in the region and beyond the region within the global south by presenting themselves as a champion of Palestinian course, the champion or a friend to the Arab world. It’s capitalizing on the unpopularity of Israel in the region to expand their own influence and present themselves as a better friend to the global south, a better friend to the Arab world than the United States, and in the process trying to undermine U.S. policy and blame the United States for this incivility, while at the same time not really doing very much about it either beyond making a lot of easy rhetorical statements.
As Jonathan mentioned, they may not have the capacity to do very much perhaps, but in my view, they actually could be doing more than they’re doing. They have been able to play an active and constructive diplomatic role in the region in the past. When you see, for example, last year, they were able to bring about a détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is a very positive step. So, they do have a degree of influence in the region to do that. And they have a degree of influence in the region with players that matter, like Iran, that perhaps they could be using in a more constructive fashion to deal with these crises than they actually are.
Eric: You say exploiting. Other people might say they’re playing a weak hand very well. They’re playing politics here, but that’s kind of to be expected in some respects. Why would they align themselves with Israel or the United States when it’s a winning proposition for them to line up with the vast majority of the global south, which politically for them is advantageous and it comes at no political cost? I mean, it seems to me that they’re playing a weak weekend very well.
Michael: I’m not actually saying it’s a bad strategy for them in terms of their greater geopolitical goals of presenting themselves as a leader within a global south. But the question is now that China is playing a more active role in the Middle East and having more influence there, the question is how are they going to use that influence? And what kind of external power are they going to be in the region? And the early signs are not particularly positive that they’re willing to at least, at the very least, tolerate instability in the region in Gaza, in the Red Sea, and to use those crises to pursue their greater political agenda and to give themselves an edge on their competition with the United States, but not necessarily helping to bring about any kind of resolution and stabilization. You don’t have to agree with the U.S. policy on Israel to perhaps cooperate if they’re really serious about a ceasefire in Gaza, for instance. Perhaps they want to be cooperating on trying to bring this about.
But we don’t necessarily see that. Instead, they’re using these things as an opportunity to undermine the US efforts and U.S. policy for their own purposes. That’s why I use the word exploit. And we can argue, okay, well, how much influence do they really have? Maybe they can’t do so much, but they can at least certainly be trying to do more than they’re doing, which is basically make a bunch of general statements and expressions of outrage and not really a whole lot of rolling up their sleeves and actually trying to solve anything.
Cobus: Jonathan, you mentioned at the beginning that China’s focus on the Middle East was, for a long time, mainly economic. Do you feel that this kind of wave of revulsion in the global south about Israeli war crimes in Gaza, is it increasingly turning that region primarily political for China?
Jonathan: No. No, I don’t think so. I think recent events make China’s strategy, it continues a strategy that’s been in place for quite a while. Like I said, we look at this from the longer arc. I’ve been in Abu Dhabi since 2006. I’ve been writing about China in the region for a very long time now. And you could see the title was pretty deliberate. There was a hedging strategy. I’m an IR prof. Hedging is something a second or third tier power does in a competitive region when they don’t have the means or the interest in playing a leading role, but they want to, IM improve their situation usually economically. China was very, very careful about doing this up until about the point, in the paper we say, you could see in 2017 when the U.S. released its national security strategy and identified China and Russia as a great power competitors.
And you can start to see a lot of Chinese actions starting from this point where they started to play the role of competitor in the region. And it was kind of low-level competition because I think China’s interest still remain very economically motivated in the region. It makes it pretty tough to measure because China’s looking at the region from a couple of different levels. Michael’s talked about the geopolitical side, and that’s absolutely a consideration. They’re looking at the region as a theater of competition with the U.S. There’s also the political economy side of things where a lot of Chinese companies are just trying to get a foothold in a very competitive region where there are not major actors. So they’ve been developing a very interesting presence across the region. It’s been uneven, but I think when you see how China’s been competing with the U.S. over the past few years through things like the global security, global development, global civilization initiatives, where they’re trying to present an alternative framework for global governance, they’re trying to present China as a different type of global power or global actor.
They came to a realization pretty early on, they’d lost the West, whether it was through Wolf Warrior or diplomacy or through just any number of economic political problems in their relations with a lot of Western countries. And they saw the global south or the developing world, or however you want to frame it, as a place where they could develop some kind of consensus on countries that also have an appetite for things being done differently. So, this has been in play for a while. I think they’ve been using, I have to be careful how I frame this, but the crisis in Gaza, the October 7th attack, and the ensuing war and the crisis that’s been going on since then really presents an opportunity for China to say, “Look, we are different.”
Now, in the Middle East, I don’t think anybody really believes in this, that China is the actor that has the solution to their problems. But I think everybody here is happy to see a rising power with a massive economic footprint playing a bigger role. Whether it’s rhetorical or whether there is some kind of diplomatic headway, I think most folks will welcome that. But I really don’t think that anybody sees it as the actor that’s really going to move the needle on many things here right now.
Eric: So, Michael — Jonathan says; not the actor that’s going to move the needle. Chinese credibility in the Middle East is, you know, iffy in some respects. And a lot of the countries look at it as, maybe they’re not going to be the savior, but they’re an alternative to the us. How much of what we’re seeing in terms of the reaction from Middle Eastern countries is just a disillusionment frustration and a relative decline of U.S. influence in the region that people are turning to China as a potential alternative?
Michael: Well, that’s the strategy that China is kind of pursuing globally in the global south, right? That let’s give Xi Jinping credit where he deserves it. He very early on out that there’s frustration throughout the developing world with the current global order and their role in it and their voice in it. And there’s also frustration with the level of economic development. And he was able to tap into this with a whole series of different initiatives. Jonathan mentioned some of them like the Global Security Initiative, but, of course, also the Belt and Road Initiative and all kinds of alternative forums and so on to try to show that China was a leader and a partner with the global south, that China was looking to elevate the voice of the leadership of the global South. And in doing so, presenting itself as a very different power to the United States.
That’s what’s playing out more specifically in the Middle East right now because I believe the Chinese approach to these crises is very much a part of its overall grander strategy as a way of building support for itself in the global south. I think the question going forward is when do the players of the Middle East actually start to have greater expectations for the kind of role that China will play in the region? Right now, perhaps they’re scoring some points by just providing rhetorical support and a certain level of diplomatic support for countries in the Arab world and for the issues that they’re concerned about right now in the Middle East. But at some point, maybe these leaders will start asking questions, saying, “Well, no, actually if China’s really going to be a major power in the region, then they need to do more, they need to play a more responsible role and need to actually dig deeper into trying to present solutions or problems rather than just sort of capitalizing on them.”
Eric: But we’re not hearing any pressure, sorry to interrupt you, we’re not hearing any pressure from any Mideast or Persian Gulf government that I can see to do that. That is coming from the U.S. and others, but have you seen any evidence that any of these governments are actually pressuring the Chinese to do what you suggest and to take a bigger role and to do more than just provide rhetorical support?
Michael: No, not at the moment. But at some point, I would think that the leadership in the Middle East is going to start asking these questions that if China really wants to be a major player in the region, that is eventually going to have to play a more constructive role in dealing with the region’s issues.
Cobus: And what do you think that role would be like from the Middle East leaders’ perspective?
Michael: You know what? That’s an extremely good question because I think the issue on the Chinese side is, is it a part of their foreign policy to even play the kind of role that they would have to in the Middle East to actually start resolving some of the crises and problems and issues? The Chinese, in their surface rhetoric, they claim that they don’t like to take sides and they believe in non-interference and they are different type of diplomacy and they don’t like alliances, and so on, so on, and so on. But if you’re going to jump into dealing with problems, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, well, then you’re going to have to move beyond some of these simple principles into actually trying to make decisions and just work out differences. And they don’t really show any serious interest or will to do that at this point.
I think that’s where, going forward, the discrepancy comes in where they want to play a bigger role in the region that could increase expectations for what China’s going do. And the question is, does Beijing really have any interest in really playing that really will or interest in really playing that role going forward? That’s one of the risks that they face.
Eric: Jonathan, this is an issue that you’ve spent years thinking about and writing about. What’s your take on it?
Jonathan: I think China knows better than anybody exactly what its position is in the region. I think they know how important the region is to them in their broader calculus. It’s not that high on the list. I always go back to this framework that Nathan and Scobell put out in this book in 2012, China’s Search for Security, where they looked at a set of concentric circles to describe China’s foreign policy priorities. And the Middle East wasn’t in this first tier, it wasn’t in the second tier, it wasn’t in the third tier, it was in the last. China’s got a very difficult domestic set of pressures to deal with. And then it shares borders with like 14 countries, many of whom cause a lot of challenges for any foreign policy practitioner. They’ve got very competitive regions with different political orders that shape China’s options and opportunities.
I think most of China’s resources and focus is devoted to its immediate periphery. The Middle East is a place where they do business, where they get a lot of contracts, where they trade, where they get energy, and everything else is gravy. If they can use the region for geopolitical purposes, I think, primarily, it’s to create pressure for the U.S., to keep the U.S. out of the South China Sea, or to shift focus away from the Indo-Pacific. I mean, we’ve seen this for decades. When George W. Bush was running for president back in ’99, 2000, the idea was China was the big challenger for the U.S., and his administration was going to focus its attention on competing with China. And then, of course, 9/11 happened and America got distracted. And then Obama came in and talked about the pivot or the rebalance, and it didn’t happen.
There’s been about 20 years of America trying to compete with China and Asia. And China’s been very happy that that hasn’t been the case. That the Middle East has been a place that’s kept the U.S. bogged down. I think when China looks at the region, like I said, its primary interests here are to pursue its economic agenda and its secondary interests are to use the Middle East to keep the U.S. away from China. And you can see that with a lot of what China does with Iran. It’s often very superficial when they announce the comprehensive strategic partnership. And people talk about $400 billion of investment and $600 billion worth of bilateral trade in 10 years. I mean, none of the stuff happens. The whole point is to spook other countries, primarily the U.S. to think, “Hey, we can’t leave the Middle East because China’s going to take over China.”
I remember talking to a China-Gulf expert last spring, and I thought I was being cheeky, I said, “I still think of China as a second tier power in this region.” And I thought I was insulting him. And he is like, “Oh my God, we’re not a second tier power. On a good day, we’re a third tier power.” He said, “Look, the English and the French are much more active in the region. Turkey’s more active, Russia’s more active. China doesn’t really have that presence here yet.” So, I think it is low-cost geopolitics for China. There’s no expectation really from local actors that China’s going to step in and solve problems. You could see that with the response to the Houthi, Red Sea attacks earlier this year. I think there was an expectation or a hope that China would be more active in that. They weren’t. I think just reinforced for a lot of local governments that, “Hey, China’s not that kind of actor.”
Eric: Cobus, there’s a lot in what Jonathan’s saying that parallels some of the discussions you’ve had over the years related to China and Africa that it’s pretty low on the priority list, but still very important in terms of rhetoric and optics and geopolitics.
Cobus: Yes. And I think now those optics have become much more central and much more prominent because I think the Middle East conflict, in particular the situation in Gaza, I think has been unique in really uniting the global south across many, many different splits. It’s much unlike, for example, Ukraine crisis. I think it created a huge opportunity China beyond anything, I think, it could have imagined to present itself as some moral Kind of spokesperson for like 80% the world’s population essentially. And that I think is becoming just more and more entrenched. The soundbites you played and also the positioning of China at UN General Assembly votes recently around this, China’s stepping out as essentially this huge spokesperson for human rights essentially, which, I mean, it would’ve been very, very difficult to imagine even two years ago.
Eric: Which is ironic, of course, in some respects.
Cobus: Yeah. But I think from the perspective of the global south, I think increasingly solid, I think.
Jonathan: Excuse me, I think one thing that we often forget is that this global south, I mean, I know you guys don’t because it’s obviously a big focus of your work, but the global South has a lot of agency in these kind of discussions, and it’s a very competitive space. It’s not like China’s coming in and able to just waltz in and say, “Hey everybody, we’re the leader.” I was at a conference in Armenia two weeks ago, and it was being sponsored by the Armenian Foreign Ministry and the Observer Research Foundation from India. And when they were talking about South-South cooperation, there were a lot of African participants, a lot of South Asian participants, Latin American participants, what they were talking about was South-South’s cooperation, learning from each other, helping each other address governance and development issues. There was no idea like, we need some country to lead us.
Eric: That’s right.
Jonathan: We don’t need anybody to support us. So, the idea that China’s just going to come in here and say, “We’re leading the global south,” you’re going to see a lot of other countries that will take issue with that, I think, in the Arab world or in the African world. People know what China’s about. They see the benefits of cooperating with it in certain sectors and they see the problems with it. It’s a very complex set of dynamics. And I don’t think it’s so much a case where China might try to exploit certain political situations for gain, but I think local actors are going to interpret it in their own way, and it’s not always going to be in China’s favor.
Cobus: No, I completely agree. But the difference is that in the first place, China is speaking in this case as a UN Security Council member. And also I think this isn’t about China, and it’s not even about China and the global South. It’s about, I think, the global south reaction to the exercise of Western power. And China is just the lucky kind of recipient of that position to be able to be seen as commenting on this kind of way. China doesn’t have to do much to step into that position. It’s simply has to speak. Because what we are seeing is Western cooperation with the situation in Israel, shredding all kinds of like Western pieties about human rights, democracy, everything left and right. Right? In that sense, that’s what I mean with it being just a huge opportunity to China because it doesn’t have to do anything. The West is doing all the work. Michael, what do you think?
Michael: Well, yeah, this is basically low hanging geopolitical fruit, right? Because the Chinese can sit back, score a bunch of rhetorical points, act like they’re a champion of the downtrodden and not really have to do anything more about it and just try to try to win over public opinion in the global south and let the United States do all the heavy lifting. So yeah, this is easy stuff, but let’s also highlight the level of, I’ll use the word hypocrisy here, not just in terms of China, but across the region. When you look at, for instance, China’s treatment of its own Muslim population and the complete lack of response from the Arab world to what’s going on there, what we’re dealing with is everybody is in this for certain self-interested reasons and exploiting the crises sort of going on in the Middle East for their own political benefit, and in the package of it being some moral cause. It’s very easy to be cynical about all of this.
Cobus: Sorry to interrupt you, but I mean, their positions are not equal, right? Because the U.S. is funding it in a much more significant way than China is.
Michael: Oh, look, I’m not going to say the U.S. is a paragon of virtue here, but the U.S. position is also extremely clear as to what the U.S. is trying to achieve. It’s also, from what I see, it’s Anthony Blinken going to the region, trying to actually bring about some kind of real ceasefire in the region and spending a lot of time on it. I don’t see Wang Yi doing that. So, the Chinese are trying to capitalize on this issue without really playing a constructive role in doing very much about it. And let’s just be honest, for the leaders of the Middle East and the Islamic world more broadly to kind of look at China as a champion based on China’s own treatment of its local Muslim population, it shows a degree of cynicism about what’s really going on.
Eric: Just to be fair, that the response to the China’s treatment of its own Muslim population is not just unique to the Middle East but pretty much the entire global south, on the votes at the UN Human Rights Council and elsewhere doesn’t seem to criticize Beijing on that. That is not actually an issue that’s a sticking issue in Africa, in any Muslim majority country in Asia. So, in that respect, the Middle East isn’t unique.
Michael: No, it’s not unique, but we can get into basically why that is if you’d like to. It’s a different issue. But the Chinese position of acting like they’re some kind of champion of the oppressed based on what the Chinese do at home to their own people, especially their minorities, is a little hard to accept.
Cobus: Jonathan, I just wanted to ask you about the Lebanese position in all of this. There seems to be danger that the conflict is expanding into Lebanon at the moment. There was meetings between Wang Yi and Lebanese representatives on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. So I was wondering how China looks at the Lebanese position there and what China Lebanese relations constitute and how they’ll be at play in this crisis.
Jonathan: Well, I’ve got a file on my computer of looking at China’s engagement with different regional countries, and the Lebanon file has always been pretty empty because there’s never been very much happening there. And there’s a bunch of reasons for that, but primarily, if you follow my point earlier about China’s economic driven interests, Lebanon hasn’t really been a place where that was going to be achieved in any significant way. It’s a very politically risky place with a poorly functioning economy. It’s not a good place for contracting, it’s not a good place for trade as is currently constituted. So, China hasn’t done much there over the years. I think right now, obviously Wang Yi, as you said, Wang Yi met with Lebanese minister on the sidelines, because I think, like everybody, we’re looking at what’s happening between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Iran indirectly as having the potential to really destabilize the entire region.
And for China, that’s a terrible scenario because they’ve got a very large expatriate population in the region. They don’t have bases here. It’s not easy to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people. And that’s what we’re talking about between 500,000 and 700,000 Chinese living in the region. So, this is a concern for every government, obviously. What do you do if this escalates? I was just talking with a colleague, I’m in Abu Dhabi right now, we were talking on campus this morning and saying, you know, when we talk to our friends or colleagues in Washington, they seem to be a lot more concerned than we do right here in the region right now. I don’t know if it’s because we all live with this kind of low-level tension all the time, so we don’t really know, or we can’t tell if it’s getting worse or not.
But I think there’s a lot of reasons for me why I’m not as concerned as maybe I should be. The big one is just, you can see a lot of countries don’t really have the appetite to see an escalation happen right now. First and foremost, Iran is very worried about what will happen if this escalates. I think Israel is taking advantage of this knowledge to try to score some tactical points right now, thinking that Iran is going to be very reluctant to engage more deeply to take it to the next level. You can see a lot of Iran’s primary sponsors from outside the region have made it pretty clear that they don’t want to engage in this way. China is not interested in supporting Iran and a Middle East War. Russia’s not capable. So, for Iran, they’re pretty much tapped out. So I think that’s part of the calculus is most folks in the region don’t want a bigger war. They’re going to do what they can to avoid it if possible. And I think China is probably signaling that when they’re talking to the Lebanese, like, “Hey, we are not interested or capable.”
And the consequences would be so significant for China that, of course, they have to play a larger diplomatic role, to signal to the actors involved that we’re not going to jump in here in the way that you might want.
Eric: Well, let’s close our discussion looking forward. I mean, again, this is an impossible region to predict what’s going to happen in the next five minutes, much less what’s going to happen down the road. But when we think of your hedging and wedging narrative, do you get the sense that they’re going to be hedging more going forward or wedging more going forward? Some final thoughts in helping people who are listening to this to better understand what to expect? Michael, let’s start with you and then Jonathan will give you the last word.
Michael: I think that the Chinese sense that they have an opportunity in the Middle East to expand their influence. And the Middle East, remember, I think from Beijing’s perspective, is seen as an important region for its overall global aspirations. You can see that, for instance, in the BRICS expansion last year where four of the six new members that were invited were from the Middle East. I think in light of all of that, the Chinese are going to try to continue to pursue this expansion of their influence in the region and continue to challenge the U.S., I would argue, probably more aggressively going forward.
Jonathan: I think China is just like any other great power. They’ve got interest and they’re going to use whatever means they have to pursue them. I think it’s a case-by-case situation, right? When it makes sense to try to exploit differences between the U.S. and its partners, it’s going to do that. When it makes sense to take their foot off the gas a little bit, they’ll do that. It really depends. I mean, one of the things that I think we haven’t talked about, but today is September 24th, the UAE’s president is in Washington for the first ever state visit of an Emirati president to the U.S. They’re talking about massive cooperation with the U.S. in terms of AI development, trade investment. And the gap between what the Emiratis does with the U.S. and what it does with China is tremendous — absolutely tremendous.
The statement I keep seeing is over a trillion dollars’ worth of Emirati investment into the U.S. It’s one of the things I think we have to keep reminding ourselves is despite the narrative right now, and despite the optics of the U.S. of being on its back foot in the region, it still is the actor of preference for a lot of countries and governments in the region. The U.S. is playing from a position of advantage. And China really is the plucky underdog in this. So, they’re going to adopt that kind of a policy. Where can they exploit this to get the most bang for their buck? Sometimes it’s going to be by riding on the US’s coattails like they did for decades. Sometimes they’re going to see that the U.S. is putting pressure on China, either because of the, you know its engagement with Russia or what’s happening in the South China Sea, and China’s going to respond in the region by somehow applying pressure on the U.S. indirectly with some kind of Middle Eastern issue. So, it’ll be sometimes hedging, sometimes wedging. It’s always going to be exciting. I encourage you all to buckle down and watch closely.
Eric: Well, the best place to start is by going over to the Atlantic Council’s website and checking out China’s Middle East Policy Shift From Hedging to Wedging. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Jonathan, Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. A fascinating report. Jonathan Fulton is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and Associate Professor of Political Science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. And Michael Schuman is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, and a contributing writer to The Atlantic. Thank you both for your time today.
Jonathan: Thanks guys. And if you don’t mind with shameless plug, I mean, obviously the place to go is to the report. The second place to go is I’ve got a newsletter, the China-MENA newsletter on Substack, where, three or four times a week, I’ve been posting content and analysis about China’s presence in the region. So, I recommend if you’re interested in the topic, this would be another place to look.
Eric: That is fantastic. And let’s not forget that you are also the host of the China in MENA Podcast, is that correct?
Jonathan: That’s correct.
Eric: And when can we expect new episodes of that to come out?
Jonathan: Soon inshallah
Eric: Okay, soon inshallah. I love that. So we’ll put links to all of Jonathan’s stories in the show notes and to sign up for the fantastic newsletter, which I get on Substack. It’s a must read. So thank you guys. I really appreciate it.
Jonathan: Thank you.
Michael: Thank you.
Eric: Cobus, I want to go back to the point that I made in the beginning of the discussion that I think the Chinese are playing a weak hand very well. And I agree with Jonathan that they don’t have the diplomatic expertise in the region. This is a relatively new region for them. They don’t have a lot of Arabic speakers in the foreign ministry. More importantly, they don’t have the relationships that come from spending decades and decades and decades in this part of the world. As they say in Chinese [Chinese 0:36:56] relationships are important and trust is everything. And so the Chinese are relatively new players. So the expectation that they’re going to have the leverage over the Iranians, or others, I think it’s kind of misplaced. And I think that’s, to the point Jonathan has made is that people have vastly overstated Chinese influence in this region to be able to persuade any of the actors to do anything.
So, given the fact that they don’t have a lot of influence, they don’t have a lot of leeway, I think the press coverage about Chinese influence in the Mid-East and the Persian Gulf vastly overestimates their potential influence. At the end of the day, rhetoric is what they’ve got left. And to that extent, I think to your point, they’re leaning into the politics that the United States and Israel are making very easy for them.
Cobus: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it reflects the fact that they are also far away from this crisis. It’s not in the immediate backyard, and so they’re a bystander, whereas the U.S. is, through funding like lots of military funding to Israel and shielding Israel in the UN and so on, the U.S. is a co-author of the Crisis. It’s two fundamentally different situations. And China is just there basically shouting from the side and taking credit essentially.
Eric: Yes and no. I see what you’re saying but I don’t necessarily agree that they’re a full bystander here, given that when you look at the top 10 oil suppliers, oil and gas suppliers to China now, in terms of their imported energy, I think six out of 10 come from this part of the world. And if war breaks out that spreads beyond Lebanon and Gaza into the wider Middle East, Syria and beyond, oil prices are going to shoot up. And that is not something that a sputtering Chinese economy needs right now. By the way, the new employment numbers for youth came out in China, 18.8% is where they are right now in youth unemployment. And everybody in the industry estimates that that is a very low number. The Chinese are low balling that number. You and I, when we were speaking with some senior Chinese officials, put that number as high as 30% to 40% when you take into account underemployment. Now imagine oil goes from $75 a barrel to $100 to $125 a barrel, then they’re not a bystander anymore.
Cobus: No, definitely. Definitely. But then they’re involved in the same way that many other big oil importers are, right? So, it’s still not involved in this really fundamental way that the U.S. is involved. It’s interesting how the discussion keeps being framed around China’s like actor role in this. And then as it was also framed China taking advantage of the situation to then grow its relationships around the global south. To me, there’s a slight difference in emphasis. I think to global south, to a certain extent, I think is the leader here, and China is responding and positioning itself in relation to the global self rather than being a main actor, I think.
And in that sense, I think it’s always been playing a bigger game, it’s playing a global game in a larger conversation about the future legitimacy of Western leadership, which I tend to see the Gaza crisis as basically a global referendum on the legitimacy of future Western leadership. I mean, the leadership itself will continue, but whether the world sees that, that leadership as legitimate, I think that there’s a big referendum in around the Gaza issue now, and China’s winning that referendum, I think.
Eric: And that’s where I might differ a little bit with Michael on his assessment of, if I was advising the Chinese government, which, of course, I don’t advise any government, nobody really cares beyond what I have to say beyond this podcast, and even then, as I see the comments on YouTube, that’s even in question as well. But let’s just say that Wang Yi said, “Hey, Eric, come up to Beijing. Tell me what you think.” I think my advice would be, why would you get bogged down in the Middle East? I mean, this is not a region that produces positive outcomes for foreign powers that come into it. It is a very complex region. This is a place, again, as you’ve pointed out, where the United States is struggling mightily with its reputation in the global south because of its basically unconditional support of Israel. So if your rival is, basically, imploding, why help them?
Then we have the issue that if the Chinese did take a more proactive role in the Middle East, and then maybe even engage the Israelis, highly unlikely, but let’s just say that that was the case — you can hear in Washington people flipping out and saying, “What are they doing?” I mean, it’s a no-win situation. In many respects, I think that the way the Chinese are playing it is probably the best way to do it right now. Lean into where the public opinion is, which is clearly against Israel in the United States, benefit from the rhetoric, commit a little bit, but not too much. And don’t get bogged down. And to Jonathan’s point, this is not a core priority for you. And I just need to remind everybody that when we talk about key and core Chinese priorities, it’s where I am sitting here in Southeast Asia. It’s in Central Asia, it’s on the periphery, it’s in the South China Sea.
It’s not in Africa, it’s not in the Middle East, it’s not in Oceana, and it’s not in Latin America and South America. I think Jonathan is absolutely right when he puts the context of where this fits in the geopolitical hierarchy. And other than the energy, it’s still not that important. And so why would the Chinese then get bogged down in a region that is incredibly complex and risky?
Cobus: Yeah, I tend to agree. It makes more sense for China to simply be pointing out the crisis, pointing out the complicity of the West in this crisis, and then use that, I think, very effectively to de universalize Western values. Because that’s the idea, right? Western values, there’s always an appeal there that these are universal, that Western promotion of democracy, for example, democracy has to be universally valuable everywhere, right? Like the Gaza crisis, I think, has been the most effective specification or it’s been the kind of crisis that has really stripped the universal value, I think from Western talking points. The west tends to push these values, democracy, human rights and so on as universal values, right? But in the wake of its ongoing support of Israeli actions, including in the contravention of international norms, for example, the prohibition in international law against the use of booby traps among civilian populations, for example, right?
As we saw with the pager explosions last week, the strong narrative that’s across the global south that, “Oh, all of this human rights talk is just a cover for Western empire. And Western empire is fundamentally colonial and racist.” Nothing has strengthened that more than U.S. support for Israel. Nothing, I think, has weakened the rules-based international order more than western support for Israel. And China doesn’t have to do anything there, right? China basically just has to stand on the sideline and point it out, and they do.
Eric: Yeah. And we’ve seen that play out in the surveys. So here in Southeast Asia, the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, in their annual report that came out earlier this year, found that us standing in this region, particularly in Muslim majority countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, fell precipitously. Same in MENA, we saw declines. And then we saw Chinese gains in Africa in public opinion in the Ichikowitz poll. And the United States was flat. So, it’s flat or declining in terms of global public opinion. As you point out, the Gaza War is probably playing quite a bit of a role in that. Just very quickly before we go, I mentioned at the top of the show that you were in Argentina last week. Very quickly, what were some of the discussions that you were having there about China South America ties?
Cobus: It was a really interesting conference on China-Latin America ties in the context of changing global orders and trying to discuss what Chinese-centric global orders would look like. And I was helping to arrange the Companion Conference in Ginsburg last year, late last year. And it was very interesting to see the ongoing conversation between Africa and South America in this respect where the Chinese engagement in South America is so much more commercial focused. Whereas in Africa, the political valence of their relationship is much more prominent.
So, it was very interesting to then put it in the context of not only Latin American politics but also this very strong history of decolonial theory that came out of Latin America because a lot of concepts of colonial economics and post-colonial world orders come from Latin American countries, for example, center periphery theory, for example. And so it was very interesting to then start talking about what China’s position looks like there and how that kind of contrast to all of this post-colonial thinking in Latin America and also the much more explicitly political relationship with between China or global south and Africa sees in Africa.
Eric: That sounds interesting. And it was wonderful for you to reconnect with some of our old friends of the show in Buenos Aires. And we’re hoping to do some shows coming up on China-Argentina relations. We just recently did China Brazil relations. So, we’ve got some very cool discussions coming up. Again, we keep coming back to the Mid-East and we will probably come back to the MidEast again in the near future just because of the magnitude of what’s happening there. Let’s leave our conversation there. If this is the kind of discussion that you like and you really just thrive on, we would love for you to check out the work that we are doing in Arabic, in French, and in English. And in our English service, you can sign up to get our daily China global South newsletter that we produce with our editors around the world.
We’ve got editors in Jakarta, in Cape Town where Cobus is, Nairobi, Mauritius, and the Middle East and me here in Southeast Asia. So, really want to encourage you to check it out. Go to chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe. If you are a student or a teacher, we will give you half off. Just email me eric@chinaglobalso.com with your academic email address and I will send you links for the $10 subscription rates that are there. So, Cobus, thank you so much for your time. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China Global South Podcast. For Cobus van Staden in Cape Town, I’m Eric Olander in Ho Chi Minh City — thank you so much for listening.
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