Energy Aspects of China’s Middle East Policy

Part 1

 

Oleksiy Volovych
Ph.D. in History

 

The Main Principles of China’s Middle East Policy

The concept of China’s Middle East policy stems from the basic principles of its global foreign policy, shaped in the last quarter of the 20st century and successfully implemented in the first two decades of the 21st century. While in the late 20th century China’s foreign policy was still dominated by political concepts, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the “Cold War” the first place in its foreign policy was taken by economic pragmatism as a result of Deng Xiaoping and his followers ‘s internal reforms.

China has always managed to maintain a stable relationship with the Middle East, not getting involved in regional political and religious conflicts, viewing them as playful and dangerous pastimes of undeveloped and selfish adolescents who do not think about the eternal and infinite, living in the now… While China’s foreign policy is meant for decades and centuries. According to Chinese ideologues, China’s main foreign policy instrument must be its ever-growing economic, financial, scientific, technological and technical capacity.

In the Middle East, China has traditionally tried not to interfere in local conflicts in the region, relying mainly not on strategic cooperation, which involves mutual responsibility, but on economic relations based on mutual benefit. However, according to Chinese experts, “it is time to change China’s former too soft policy in the Middle East”, using not military force, but economic and financial power of China. On this basis, China manages to maintain normal political and economic relations with those countries that are in chronic military and political confrontation, as is the case, for example, between Iran — on the one hand, and Israel and the KSA — on the other. The growing Chinese arms market is increasingly attracting Israel, casting aside “ideological differences” over Iran and its policy in the Middle East. In its turn, China is interested in gaining access to Israeli technological innovations in the arms and military sphere, as well as in the aerospace industry.

The article is available in Ukrainian

Energy Aspects of China’s Middle East Policy. Part 2

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