There was widespread disappointment in Iran that China didn’t do more to help Tehran during the recent 12-day war with Israel and the United States. Beijing, for its part, offered robust rhetorical and moral support, but little else.
The calculus for Chinese policymakers is that Iran just isn’t as strategically important to its foreign policy as other countries in the region, namely Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Jonathan Fulton, an associate professor at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and a leading expert on Sino-Persian Gulf relations, joins Eric to discuss his new book that explains China’s rapidly expanding portfolio of interests in the region and why Iran, in particular, is not among Beijing’s top priorities.
Show Notes:
- Amazon.com: Building the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arab World: China’s Middle East Math by Jonathan Fulton
- China-MENA Newsletter: The myth of China’s leverage in Iran by Jonathan Fulton
- Bloomberg: Israel Urges China to Pressure Iran to Rein In Nuclear Ambitions
About Jonathan Fulton:
Jonathan Fulton is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow with Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council. An expert on Chinese policy toward the Middle East, he has written widely on the topic for both academic and popular publications. His books include China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2019), External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies (co-edited with Li-Chen Sim, Routledge, 2019), Regions in the Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge, 2022), Routledge Handbook on China-Middle East Relations (Routledge, 2022), and Asian Perceptions of Gulf Security (co-edited with Li-Chen Sim, Routledge, 2023). Fulton has published over 30 journal articles, book chapters, and reports, and dozens of op-eds and analytical pieces. His analysis has been featured in global media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the BBC. He is also the host of the Atlantic Council’s popular China-MENA Podcast and publishes The China-MENA Newsletter.
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 and today we’re going to focus again on the Middle East. I know we’ve been doing this quite a bit over the past few weeks and we’ve got one more show coming up to focus on specifically Iran, but this is a story that is so complex, so multifaceted, that it just requires a lot of discussion to unpack some of the trends.
And I can only tell you that in the four or five discussions that we’ve done this year, we’ve only scratched the surface. So we’re going to try and go a little bit deeper today. But listen, the news this week came up again about China’s role in the Persian Gulf in the Middle East.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, he traveled to China this week for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s foreign ministers gathering. Now, this was the first time that the foreign minister was in China to meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi since the 12-day war among the US, Israel, and Iran last month. And the symbolism of this meeting is quite important because there was a lot of disappointment in Iran and among its supporters that the Chinese didn’t do more to support Iran beyond the moral support and the rhetorical support.
So if you recall, Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Fu Cong, he spoke out repeatedly against Israel and the United States for the attacks. The foreign ministry in Beijing did the same. But other than that type of rhetorical support, we didn’t hear very much.
But the kind of geopolitical map today in the region looks very different than it did even just a few months ago, much less last year at this time. And that’s why we want to kind of look at the whole region as a whole and where China’s role is in that as it stands today. So for that, we’re thrilled to have our old friend Jonathan Fulton, who’s an associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and the author of a brand new beautiful book, Building the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arab World, China’s Middle East Math.
And also just very important to note, host of the China MENA podcast and the man behind the indispensable China MENA newsletter on Substack, which again, I highly recommend everybody to sign up for. And I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. And he is taking time from his summer holiday to join us.
A very good afternoon to you, Jonathan.
JONATHAN FULTON: Good afternoon, Eric. Great to be back with you today.
ERIC OLANDER: It’s wonderful to have you back and to help us unpack so much of what’s happened here. We’re going to look at what you’ve laid out in the book more broadly across the region. But I do want to start in Iran, in part, because we see this question of leverage that keeps coming back up in the conversation in the China Iran relationship.
We spoke to you last year about this when the United States repeatedly sought Chinese help to kind of use their purported leverage with Iran to stop the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Also to, you know, just to basically try and contain some of Iran’s behavior. Remember, Senate Majority Leader then Chuck Schumer, he raised the issue in a meeting with Xi Jinping.
Also, the National Security Advisor raised it directly with Wang Yi. Both times, it seems like it went unheard. But at the same time, I want to bring up a conversation that came up in a press briefing two weeks ago in Shanghai, who was done by Consul General Ravid Bair from Israel.
She said China is the only one capable of influencing Iran. Iran would collapse if China didn’t buy its oil. Bair then recently spoke with Bloomberg, where she explained why she thinks China can positively influence Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons development program.
And I want to get your take on this, because this is an issue that you’ve also written about. Let’s take a listen now to the Consul General.
SOUNDBITE: And we have spoken a lot about what it meant, you know, if Iran would have had a nuclear weapon, and the fact that this threat is imminent, an immediate threat has been lifted. How is that very conducive to peace in the Middle East for settlements, for stopping any kinds of an arm race? We also spoke about the future, and the future should be a place where Iran kind of gives up its ambitions to have a nuclear weapon, to have a nuclear military program.
And that will require some kind of an agreement or an international negotiations that will lead to an agreement, which I think is probably plausible. And in that scenario, China could have a very positive role. China is a very important partner for Iran.
Iran’s economy is highly reliant on the Chinese procurement of oil, and many other things. And that puts China in a very unique position in which it can influence Iran. And I think this is a place where China can be a positive actor and can contribute to an agreement or a settlement in which the international community and the IAEA could lead some kind of a settled agreement with Iran on not pursuing their nuclear ambitions, and having some kind of a program that is acceptable for the world in that arena.
And this is really something in which China could be a very positive actor.
ERIC OLANDER: Jonathan, it’s apparent that Consul General Baer does not read the China-MENA substack, because you wrote recently the myth of China’s leverage in Iran. And let me quote from it, and this is where I’d like to get your reaction to your comments. Since October 7th, 2023, I don’t think China has any leverage in Iran.
The limits of what Beijing is willing to do for Tehran have been made clear time and again. Help me reconcile what you are saying and then what the Consul General is saying.
JONATHAN FULTON: Well, that’s kind of a tough needle to thread. I understand the Consul General’s perspective, because you hear this a lot from folks in Israel, and you hear from folks in the US, the idea that Iranian economy is so dependent on China that this creates some kind of space where China could influence Iranian politics. And if that were the case, I think we would have seen it already, right?
Because China’s, I say this over and over again, China’s primary interests in the Middle East are economic. And because of this, it prizes stability. It doesn’t want a region where Iran or Iranian-supported proxies are undermining the very fragile stability.
China sometimes does have leverage in Tehran. I think since October 7th it hasn’t, because Iran isn’t going to be motivated by what China has to offer. And that’s primarily economic assistance, loans, infrastructure development, helping them develop a gas field, trade investment.
Those aren’t things Iran needs right now. What Iran needs right now is air support. And China doesn’t do that.
China has a non-alliance policy. It’s not going to go into any Middle Eastern country and offer military support in whatever conflict is taking place. There’s been any number of situations over the past couple of years where if China were to do that, we would have seen it.
China doesn’t see the region as one of its so-called core interests. It sees the region as that second or third tier of interests. It’s primarily a place to make money, and it’s not going to blow its political capital or its economic position in the region by getting involved in regional conflicts.
I think when they look at the situation between Israel and Iran, they see it as part of this broader historical trend that came from the end of the Ottoman empire and this new modern state situation where the Brits and the French redrew the maps and America supported it. And China to quote Colin Powell with a pottery barn policy, you broke it, you bought it. So I think China is going to say, look, this is a mess that others made.
You expect us to support your preferences for regional order. We’re not interested in that. We see the region differently and we’re not going to go out of our way to prop up a very rickety structure made by colonial powers in the last century.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Well, we will never see the PLA Air Force flying in that region in support of Iran. To that point, I 100% agree, but we have been seeing a lot of reports about Iranian interest in acquiring the J-10 fighter jets, especially after what a lot of people felt was a very encouraging performance by Chinese military technology, not just the air force jets, the J-10s in Pakistan, but also how the Pakistani military leveraged Chinese information technology, ground base stations.
Also, the whole ecosystem of Chinese military tech purportedly performed very well in Pakistan. The Iranians clearly looking at that and saying, maybe that’s the gap that we can fill with Chinese tech. When you look at those reports about Chinese weapons procurement in a country like Iran, is there any substance to that?
Is that something that would help maybe change the equation? And clearly Israel is not going to be happy if the Chinese start exporting some of their advanced fighter jets to the Iranians.
JONATHAN FULTON: Yeah. So this feels to me like something that I’ll give a definitive answer and then maybe look foolish in a couple of months. But I don’t see a scenario where that kind of Chinese weapons technology makes its way to Iran for the main purpose that there’s a good chance that if Iran had that, they would use it in a broader regional conflict that would put Chinese interests at risk and also put China directly in opposition to a lot of actors that it doesn’t want to be in opposition to.
I think really when you think about China’s involvement in Middle Eastern politics, there’s the regional level, which is complex enough where China’s doing so much business with the GCC countries and Egypt, where there’s a lot of Chinese investment and Chinese expatriate communities. That’s a big concern for them. They don’t want to empower or tilt the scales in favor of Iran, knowing that it could undermine or jeopardize those interests and those assets and those expats.
But then you have to step back and look at it at the broader international level. And in that case, it’s all about China’s relations with the US, right? Which is the baseline of everything and all of the decisions Beijing is making.
And I think China has to consider, is it willing to overtly challenge America in a way that will cause a broader conflict for China by supporting an isolated country like Iran that doesn’t have too many good relationships anywhere else in the world? Are you really going to blow that political capital in support of Iran, knowing that the US could then operationalize a lot of allies or partners that surround China, right? That the East China Sea, the South China Sea could be arenas where America could poke back.
So I think China would look at this and think, what do we get out of selling J-10s to Iran? We get money. We’ve got lots of money.
We don’t want the consequences, which could be diminished political reputation among countries like the Saudis and the Emiratis, plus blowback in the relationship with the US, which of course is always something that they’re trying to navigate. It’s very fragile, but I think primarily China would like to have a better relationship with DC. So why provoke them in Iran of all places?
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. So last year when we spoke to you, you laid out the hierarchy of interest that China has in the Persian Gulf and you put the Emirates and the Saudis at the top of that. Does that still remain the same?
Has what we’ve seen over the past three, four, five months changed China’s hierarchy of interests?
JONATHAN FULTON: No, no. I think if anything, what we’ve seen is just how little China does in Iran. Again, if we look at an economic rubric to measure China’s presence in the region, Iran is not that impressive.
Whereas the Saudis and Emiratis have both surpassed that $100 billion a year in trade, tens of billions of dollars in Chinese investment, tens of billions of dollars in Chinese contracting in the Gulf countries. And as I mentioned before, a lot of expatriate citizens. So there’s never specific numbers, but the Chinese ambassador to the Emirates said last year that there were 400,000, approximately 400,000 Chinese citizens living in the UAE.
So a country of 10 million people, that’s a very significant expatriate population. By far, China’s biggest in the Middle East. Now, when China was evacuating PRC nationals out of Iran last month, they were saying they have between 2,000 and 3,000 Chinese in Iran that they’ve got to find ways to get out.
So 400,000 in one specific country on the other side of the Gulf compared to 2,000 or 3,000. I think it tells you quite a bit. China’s interests are much, much, much more deeper, more mature, more multifaceted on the GCC side of the Gulf.
Of course, there’s that line that Iran is the economy of the future and always will be, to quote, I guess it was Bonaparte, but maybe, right? Like if Iran comes online, if something changes and 90 million people are reintroduced into the global economy, that could be a great opportunity. But that’s talking about potential and what you see on the other side of the Gulf is reality, where we’ve seen decades of China methodically building very mature, stable, long-term relationships based on investment, based on helping countries develop their renewable energy, trying to break into different technologies, building political relationships with partnership agreements.
The GCC is definitely much more impressive. And in that, I would say the UAE is probably the most impressive and Saudis are close to, and Iran, it’s down the list.
ERIC OLANDER: And just to give that number, 400,000, some perspective, the best estimates today that scholars have about how many Chinese expatriates are in Africa, a region of 1.3 billion people is about 750,000, well under a million now. So to see a small Emirates have 10 million people with 400,000 in a region like Africa with 750,000 just shows you the outsized importance that the Emirates now has. Very quickly before we move on to the book, one last question about the conflict.
At the height of the conflict, there was concerns that the Iranians were going to close the Straits of Hormuz. And again, the Iranian parliament said that it gave the government permission to do so. The government, of course, did not ultimately close the Straits of Hormuz in part because it would have caused chaos in the international economy, especially with China, where it’s believed they get between a third and a half of their oil.
It seems to me when this issue came up that the Chinese may have miscalculated by concentrating so much of its energy to pass through such a volatile waterway. And this is something that’s happened over the past decade where the Chinese have shifted a lot of their oil production out of Africa, concentrating a lot of it in the Gulf, in the Saudis, the Qataris and the Emiratis as well. And so putting their supply chain potentially at risk if Iran ever decided to close the Straits of Hormuz or if it was closed due to another conflict.
What’s your take on this question of the concentration of energy resources that pass through the Strait? And do you think that the decision that the Iranians made not to close it was in part due to Chinese pressure to keep the oil flowing?
JONATHAN FULTON: So I’ll start at the end. I mean, I think China definitely is part of the equation. I also think that Iran’s relationship with the GCC has improved so much over the past four or five years.
And I think that also is a part of the equation, you know, to think they have been doing a lot of both sides have been doing a lot of work to lower the temperature and to create opportunities to cooperate or coordinate policy to really just, you know, the buzzword before October 7th, 23 was always de-escalation where, especially in the UAE where I live, everybody was talking about how can we find ways to get past geopolitical competition in the Middle East and build a region where foreign investment is going to come in and foreign expertise is going to come in and build companies and help us get past these post hydrocarbon economies. And what you saw in Saudi and the UAE was Iran is a very important part of that puzzle, right?
You’ve got to work with the Iranians to make a more stable, sustainable region. And I think for Iran, this was a very welcome engagement, you know, to think that if Iran is going to solve any of its problems, it especially is going to rely on, on, you know, the huge Iranian population in Dubai, the financial institutions that Iran doesn’t have, you know, to use Dubai’s banking, to use the UAE’s ports, they’re going to rely a lot on the GCC countries. So I think that was a part of it that maybe doesn’t get recognized a lot.
Yeah. It’s about China. It’s also about, you know, how do we not antagonize needlessly the Gulf countries.
Now, I think it’s been interesting if, if you’ve been watching what China has been doing on the Arabian peninsula, you know, a lot of countries, the Oman and the UAE in particular, because they have that long Arabian sea coastline that, that helps circumnavigate the, or get around the Strait of Hormuz. So you’ve seen a lot of a Chinese built pipeline that goes from the UAE’s oil and gas field in the Persian Gulf that goes to Fujairah, a port on the Arabian sea coastline, where they built a huge energy bunker and they’re building pipelines and they’re building refineries. And then in Oman, there was of course, a few years ago, the hype of Dokum, where China was supposedly going to put about $11 billion into projects in Dokum.
That hasn’t happened. But I think part of the idea was to build an energy hub that helps you get around Hormuz and other projects in Oman have been, you know, flourishing with support from China. So I think obviously it’s not going to solve the problem in the same way the Strait of Hormuz waterway ever could, but what you’re seeing is a lot of alternatives where Chinese companies are helping, helping develop that as well.
ERIC OLANDER: We’ll come back to you later on Iran and those issues as they develop, but let’s move on now to the book and talking about building the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arab world. When we think about the Belt and Road, the Arab world doesn’t always come to mind first. We oftentimes think of the major connectivity points like the port of Mombasa in Kenya, obviously in Southeast Asia, where I live, but at the end of the day, Saudi Arabia, if I recall in 24 or 23 was the largest recipient of BRI money.
It is a core part of the Belt and Road in part because of energy. What did you set out to achieve in writing this book, particularly in a field that is not very well developed in terms of the amount of academic literature on China, Mideast and Persian Gulf relations? What did you want to achieve with this book?
JONATHAN FULTON:
Okay. So the framework for the book, the second part of the title is China’s Middle East math, which is weird granted, but the idea is that in 2014, during the China Arab States cooperation forum in Beijing, Xi Jinping gave the opening statement and in it, he said, let’s focus on the one plus two plus three cooperation framework as a way to develop ties with the Arab world. And nobody had ever heard of the one plus two plus three cooperation framework.
So it was one of those things that came out, you know, it was in early 2014. I think the time is important because of course the BRI was rolled out in 2013 with a series of kind of equally fuzzy speeches that nobody really knew what they meant. But what the one plus two plus three framework was, was each number represents a different sector that China wanted to support in developing stronger ties with the Arab world.
So one is your hydrocarbon trade and investment. Two is.
ERIC OLANDER: That’s the energy piece we talked about.
JONATHAN FULTON: Right. Energy at the core. Two is called the two wings and the two wings are trade investment and infrastructure cooperation.
So, so far, number one and two are exactly what we think about in China, or when we think about China in the Middle East is energy trade investment and infrastructure. Three is the interesting one. It’s called the three breakthroughs.
And this is nuclear energy, renewable energy and space satellite. So basically an satellite systems across the Arab world. Three, I think is the innovation.
So for the book, my focus was what’s happened 10 years in, you know, have we seen any interesting patterns of engagement? Are there any countries that have taken advantage of this, this increased focus from China to, to develop a bigger importance in Beijing’s eyes? My hope, you know, as you’ve said, as I’ve said, I live in the Gulf and China Gulf is pretty well established.
There’s a lot happening there. My hope was, you know, maybe I’ve missed something, you know, in the broader Arab world, maybe there’s a country or a sub-region that’s seen a lot of Chinese activity that nobody’s really talked about yet. And no, no, it’s been pretty much the Gulf.
You do see kind of a second tier of countries that have been, you know, improving their position vis-a-vis those, those three cooperation frameworks, Iraq, Egypt, and Morocco have been doing a lot, but really the, the central, the load bearing pillar of China’s presence in the Arab world remains in the GCC. And that’s primarily Saudi and the UAE.
ERIC OLANDER: Now, do we see any of the one, two, three extending out to those countries that ring Israel? So thinking about Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and even the Palestinian authority in the Palestinian territories, do these apply to those as well? Or is this focused mostly on the wealthier parts of the Arab world that are in the Gulf?
JONATHAN FULTON: So theoretically it applies to every Arab league country because it was rolled out at this China Arab states cooperation forum. And that’s a mechanism China has like FOCAC, which your, your listeners will be very familiar with, you know, a Chinese cooperation framework for working with all the Arab league countries. So theoretically, you know, Djibouti, Sudan, any Arab league member could be seeing this.
Now in practice, what we’ve, what we’ve seen is that countries that have a high level of political risk or economic risk or security risk haven’t really been actively engaged with China, whether because it’s their own political situation like Syria or a Chinese state-owned enterprise reluctance in going into a security risk environment to try to win contracts. So with the countries you mentioned, the countries that ring Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, you see very, very little happening in any of the sections of this one plus two plus three. I guess the logic is why would you as the project manager of an SOE go to Syria and try to build something where there’s a good chance that you’re going to face some security problems for a very low financial result when I can just go next door to Saudi or to Iraq and not face the same kind of problems and make a lot of money.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because Donald Trump made his first overseas visit of his second presidency to these regions, the UAE in particular, and also Saudi Arabia, and he really made it a priority. They said that these regions are going to be a major focus and a couple of things that he did seem to echo the Chinese strategy that you lay out in the book, specifically the non-interference rhetoric.
And again, Donald Trump has been very selective in his non-interference. His 50% tariff threat on Bolsonaro is absolutely an interference in Brazil’s internal affairs. And obviously he has a stake and he’s expressed concern about the plight of white Afrikaners in South Africa.
Again, getting involved in the internal affairs of another country, but in the Gulf, he made it very clear. He said, previous American presidents got up and said human rights was an issue and political governance issues. We’re not going to do that anymore.
That of course is a longstanding Chinese position. And it’s interesting how they converged in that point. He also said that he wants the United States to be active in securing energy supplies and technology in those regions, which again, echo many of the one plus two plus three themes that you have outlined in the book.
Talk to us about this question of non-interference in this region coming from both the US and from China and why this region seems to demand it more from its partners than other regions do.
JONATHAN FULTON: Yeah, it’s interesting. And I should just point out that I’m in Canada today, so we’re very familiar with the current administrations.
ERIC OLANDER: Yes, with Donald Trump’s intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. Right.
JONATHAN FULTON: Yeah. And for the American listeners who maybe aren’t aware, nobody wants to be the 51st state.
ERIC OLANDER: Thank you for clarifying that. I wasn’t sure if it was clear enough from the Canadians up until now.
JONATHAN FULTON: I do get asked occasionally when I’m doing talks at American institutions where people are wondering why there might not be interest in the generous offer to become a state. There’s no appetite, quite a lot of anger.
ERIC OLANDER: But you don’t want our healthcare system? How can you not want our healthcare system? But okay, non-interference in the Gulf.
Tell us about that.
JONATHAN FULTON: Okay. Well, look, so I think this is obviously a political issue from one administration to the next. Going back to George W.
Bush with his intervention in Iraq and trying to justify this as spreading democracy and freedom and other values that he felt that the region was lacking. And then you had Obama who said, basically, hands off. We’re not doing the Middle East very well, so let’s not spend as much time.
Let’s pivot. When Donald Trump says like he did in Saudi earlier this year, we’re not going to tell you how to live, that’s music to everybody’s ears. And I think that’s true pretty much around the world.
I’ve traveled a fair bit. I’ve lived in a lot of different countries. There is a higher degree of frustration with Western liberal arrogance that we’re the only ones who’s figured it out.
And to have political leaders from other countries that have tremendous social problems wagging their finger and telling you you’re doing it wrong is deeply frustrating. So it was welcomed when Donald Trump did this. I think for Trump, the idea is, and one more way to distinguish himself from Biden, because when Biden came in, obviously, democracy promotion was done in a way that I thought geopolitically was kind of interesting.
At the end of COVID, at the end of the Trump administration, the idea of the West didn’t exist. There’s this assumption that Western liberal democracies were on their back foot, that the West and NATO were fractured, and that authoritarian countries seem to be handling a lot of the political problems of that particular moment better. And this comes back to the Iran question and why China and Russia have been doing so much with Iran over the past few years.
They kind of locked themselves into that relationship at a point when all these countries looked like they were ascendant and the West was on its back foot. And I think the US change in administration under Biden needed some kind of rallying cry to say, look, Western countries, we need to start working together again, bringing more attention to the alliances, working with the Asian hub and spoke countries that have been kind of treated not very well by the first Trump administration, recommitting to NATO. And liberal democracy was kind of the framework.
So you saw Biden talking about this with the summit of the democracies and really a lot of heavy handed rhetoric towards non-democratic allies or partners like the Saudis. And I think this is probably done for political points with domestic constituents at home, but of course it was really, really adversarial in a region that needs the US and that the US needs as well. So for Trump then to come in and say, yeah, I’m not like Biden.
I’m not going to talk to you guys the way he did. It’s welcome. I think it also was recognition that while you see allies and partners like Canada or like the Europeans being treated with a lot of disdain from the current administration, partners in the Gulf were treated very, very well.
And what you see, especially with the GCC, these very wealthy countries with a lot of capital and very ambitious agendas in the tech sphere, again, getting back to the point I mentioned earlier about trying to get away from this hydrocarbon dominated economy. I live in Abu Dhabi and you can be sitting at a hotel bar and hearing people talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in deals. And in the past, that was usually oil and gas people.
And now they’re all AI people. There’s just so much happening in the tech space and whether that’s data centers or whether that’s chips or AI or whatever, there’s a lot happening in the Gulf. And of course, China is a very willing partner in a lot of that space.
And we’ve seen over the past few years that the US-China competition playing out in tech, in AI, in the Gulf. So I think Trump’s visit to the region to me was a pretty well-played move, right? To say, look, what you guys want, you can afford best in class.
We offer it. We offer you, you know, partnerships with Microsoft and with all of these other companies. And with it comes access to our market and our tech and our chips.
ERIC OLANDER: And China- And venture capital, by the way, money too. Absolutely.
JONATHAN FULTON: And I think knowing that this comes bundled with the security commitments that the US has offered creates a situation that China can’t compete because China has this non-alliance policy. China’s made it very clear, we’re happy to do business with you, but we’re not going to get involved in your security entanglements. And that’s the competitive edge that America has in the Gulf.
ERIC OLANDER: But at the same time, we’ve seen a lot of advancements. And you talk about this in the book of Chinese technology in these regions. It was framed in the US that when Trump went, there was a big setback for the Chinese.
And the highlight of this, of course, is the UAE-backed G42 AI company that, you know, disassociated itself with Chinese entanglements and then aligned itself with Microsoft. When we saw these headlines, though, did that mask the reality in terms of how much Chinese tech is permeating into UAE society and also in the Gulf? Because we see Huawei making big inroads, BYD is there aggressively, also Meituan, these are big e-commerce companies are starting to expand in this region.
What is the kind of the balance between US and Chinese tech in these countries?
JONATHAN FULTON: Yeah, it’s complicated, right? Because I think what we heard when this great power competition framework started to get rolled out in late 2017 was that any cooperation with China in tech sphere was going to be a red line. And everybody in the Middle East found that a very dissatisfying answer, right?
Like everything is tech. I remember being in Tel Aviv talking to a guy who had a cosmetics firm that used Chinese AI to help them develop the product lines. And an American official was in the meeting and said, well, that’s a red line.
You can’t work with Chinese AI. And he’s like, it’s makeup. And they said, well, it could be dual use.
You never know. And that was, you never know. That was the message everybody was getting for about a good six or seven years was you can’t work with China on tech stuff.
And I think to their credit in the Biden administration, they realized that that wasn’t a very realistic response. And I think they set the parameters pretty clearly to say, here are things that Chinese tech is acceptable. And here are things where they’re not acceptable.
And in the things that are acceptable, I think you’ll see Gulf countries are very enthusiastic to work with Chinese companies in this type of tech.
ERIC OLANDER: So what’s acceptable. Give us a sense of what’s acceptable.
JONATHAN FULTON: Well, that’s, that’s a different podcast guest. I think somebody who actually understands AI better than I do.
ERIC OLANDER: But AI acceptable in terms of new energy, solar panels, BYD cars, that would all be under the realm of acceptable, right? Presumably.
JONATHAN FULTON: Well, I hope it is because it’s everywhere. Right. But I think anything that links up to any kind of critical infrastructure that brushes up against the U S is ability to put troops and hardware in bases in the Gulf without being compromised.
Um, if it’s something that’s seen as purely commercial, like Chinese EVs, which are everywhere, everywhere in the Gulf, it’s incredible to me that the change in how people have come to see these cars. I remember going to an auto show in Abu Dhabi about 10 years ago, and it’s all Ferraris and Maseratis and Lamborghinis. I took my little, you know, my then little kids, cause they want to see the fancy cars.
And then I like the least desirable spot at the car show was this BYD stall. And it was, it was laughable. Like, you know, the license plate was hanging by a single screw and just kind of dangling and brushing like as the floor and nobody wanted to look at the thing.
It was an ugly car. Nobody thought it was interesting. And now everywhere you look, people are buying Chinese EVs, the, the price point difference, uh, the after sale service they’re everywhere.
So I think what you see, you know, in that space and, and especially what you bring up is a big part of the book is renewable energy, whether it’s a solar panels, whether it’s just creating any kind of renewable energy options, Chinese companies are totally cleaning up.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Very quickly, before we go, cause I want to let you get back to your vacation. You’d also talked a lot about security and defense in the book as the China has a very limited presence there, but there’s always been a concern by Europeans and Americans that the Chinese were going to create a submarine base in the UAE that did not materialize that there was going to be greater presence of PLA Navy activity in the Gulf.
Uh, we don’t see that too much, but there was always, he’s concerned that there’s going to be a permanent Chinese military presence in the region. Again, we have not seen that outside of the base in Djibouti, uh, that still remains the only Chinese base in that region. Uh, what about the security presence?
And, and again, you’ve talked about the non-alliance and we’ve talked about the procurement of Chinese weapons, but countries like the UAE really do like Chinese drones. So there, there is some security involvement in the region. Help us map out what you’ve talked about in the book in terms of China’s military and security engagement.
JONATHAN FULTON: I think these countries like buying Chinese drones. I don’t think they’re like using them that much. You’ve heard conflicting reports of their efficacy from different conflicts in the region.
And, you know, really in terms of Chinese as China’s an arm arms vendor, it’s not anywhere near what you would expect. It’s really quite a modest provider. You see reports about, you know, maybe Egypt’s going to buy something, maybe Algeria is going to buy something.
It’s, it’s really, it remains a market dominated by Western companies. Now, in terms of the military presence, same, like you just don’t see much, right? I’ve, it comes back, I think, to this concept of core interests.
When Chinese leaders are thinking about power projection or their foreign policy priorities, I don’t think the Middle East is too high on the list. You know, they have so many domestic issues that take so much of their time. And then that spills over into regions or countries or provinces like Xinjiang or Tibet or Taiwan that also require a lot of their focus.
And then you’re surrounded by, what is it, 13 countries they share land borders with and a bunch of countries they share maritime borders with. And a lot of them are problematic partners or, or hostile States. And then you’ve got a bunch of US allies and partners.
So the bulk of their military defense strategy, I think is focused on its immediate periphery. And just the fact that you don’t see, you know, like, so the base in Djibouti, the rumored facility in Tajikistan, maybe there’s something happening in Cambodia. It’s got a bunch of commercial industrial park and port management across the Indian ocean region.
It doesn’t serve as connective tissue to project power in the same way America’s deep alliance system and 700 plus military facilities around the world allows America to project power. If there were a scenario where China has to evacuate 400,000 people out of the UAE, it would severely tax, you know, their, their navels, their Navy’s capacity to do it. So I’d understand why China might want to, it would make sense.
If you have all those assets, if you have all those investments, if you have all of those expats in a secure, well, a competitive region with a lot of conflict, you probably would want a deeper footprint that would help you manage this. And China hasn’t really done that. I think it tells us a lot about how China sees the region.
I think they’re quite satisfied with the status quo. I think as much as they enjoy criticizing the U.S. security architecture, they definitely find it’s a pretty cost-effective way to manage their own interests without having to foot the bill and do more.
ERIC OLANDER: The book was a fascinating read. I really enjoyed it. It did fill a gap in the discourse in terms of providing this very broad survey of China’s engagement in different parts of the region and across different sectors, as we’ve talked about.
What do you want people to take away from the book after they finished it, after they’ve put it down, what’s your hope in terms of how they understand China’s engagement in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East?
JONATHAN FULTON: Well, I guess my hope is that this is one of the most politicized issues, I guess, because I focus on it, I see it this way, but the barrier to entry on China Middle East studies is pretty low these days. It became a sexy topic not long ago, and a lot of people have jumped in with both feet. And often they don’t really understand the Middle East very well, or they don’t understand China very well, or both.
And what the result often seems to be is a lot of projection. This is what I think would happen based on what I would do if I were them. And I think that applies to a lot of, I talked to people in policymaking communities a lot, a lot of diplomats, a lot of officials who haven’t really given this a whole lot of depth of thought, because they’ve got a lot of other things to think about, and this is kind of new and maybe a little weird.
So I hope that people reading this would just have more of a realistic understanding of what it looks like on the ground, which is a country that has played a very insignificant role in a competitive region forever is starting to play a slightly more meaningful role, but nowhere near the way that it’s often portrayed. If you talk to Chinese diplomats in the region, they’re often, they’ve got great language skills, they know a lot about the region, but it’s a very shallow pool of talent. China’s area studies in its universities, its think tags are all at a nascent level, much like the U.S. as we’re back at the early days of the cold war, when America stopped thinking of itself as a, you know, a regional country and start thinking of itself as a global country, a global power, and realizing we actually have to know about the rest of the world in a way that we didn’t need to know about before the war. I think China’s there now looking at its Belt and Road and looking at its SOEs all over the place and saying, you know, if we’re going to manage these interests all over the place, we actually have to understand all over the place.
So it’s at kind of a developmental stage right now, I think, and it’s not going to be the case for long. I think within 20 years, you’re going to see a lot of great China, Middle East scholarship. You’re going to see a lot of great centers studying the region.
You’re going to see a lot more scholarship programs and people going from both directions. But this is early days. It’s not really as deep or sophisticated as a lot of the analysis portrays it.
It’s not as troublesome probably as we tend to think. Yeah. So I hope that’s my big hope.
And then I hope also that everybody buys lots of copies for their cousins and classmates and casual acquaintances.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, fair enough. We’ll try to help make that happen. The book is Building the Belt and Road Initiative in the Arab World, China’s Middle East Math by Jonathan Fulton.
We will put it in the show notes, the link, so you can help satisfy Jonathan’s ambitions to get your cousins and uncles to buy the book. Also, you do produce the China MENA podcast in the China MENA substack. Tell us a little bit about what people can expect if they sign up for your substack.
JONATHAN FULTON: So with the substack, this has been to me a really rewarding project. My day job, of course, is I’m an academic. And you’ll spend months writing an academic article that goes behind a paywall that nobody can afford.
And if you’re lucky, a few hundred people might see this article over the course of a few years. China Middle East is, I think, a really important issue that a lot of policymakers, a lot of academics, a lot of people in the world need to understand better. So the logic behind this was to just write in a non-jargony, non-academic tone to reach a broader audience and to do it with a frequency that will help people understand what’s happening as it’s happening.
So my initial thought was, okay, I’ll publish once a week. And then what I realized very quickly is there’s just way too much stuff happening to do this once a week. So typically I try to publish three times a week.
And what I’ll do is share links of current stories that are in the news with someone else that explains why this is important or why it’s not important. Occasionally I’ll write essays like the one you mentioned, The Myth of China’s Leverage, and sharing stuff that I think people might want to see, whether it’s books, articles, podcasts, stuff you guys do, just sharing content that I think will help people understand this topic better. The podcast seems to be, we’ve been on hiatus for about a year.
I hope it’ll come back. We’ll see. But yeah, for now, the newsletter has been a really fun project.
ERIC OLANDER: Okay. Well, we’ll put a link to that as well. And it’s a resource that we depend on in our daily coverage because we oftentimes draw from what Jonathan’s seeing.
So it’s very, very helpful. Jonathan Fulton is an associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and one of the smartest guys out there when it comes to China, Mideast and China-Persian Gulf relations. Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
We really appreciate it. Always a pleasure, Ark. Thanks.
And we’ll be back again next week with another episode of the China Global South podcast for everybody at CGSP, Kobus, Gero, Lucy, and the entire team around the world. Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
