China's role in the Middle East

I write this as Donald Trump is preparing for his visit to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping. He is set to meet the Chinese leader on May 14 for a two-day session. I will follow up with another article when the talks have taken place and the two sides have reported on their impressions of what was achieved. When the visit was planned, Trump had imposed and then eased the stiff tariffs he had levied on imports from China. Then the Beijing talks were planned to deal with trade issues. But now, the focus is likely to be the war in Iran that was launched by Trump on February 28 with little planning. It is now known that the attack on Iran was prompted by a push by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is afraid of Iran becoming a nuclear power.

There is little doubt that the war in Iran, which has now developed into skirmishes involving several states in the area, will feature prominently in the Beijing talks. China, like Pakistan, is worried with the way its own interests in the area would be adversely affected by the continuing war in the Middle East. The two countries have close relations and have been involved in persuading Iran to reach a deal with Washington to end the war. Pakistan, which hosted a round of US-Iran peace talks in Islamabad - where the American delegation was led by Vice President JD Vance and included President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff - was unable to bring the two sides closer to an agreement. Vance held uninterrupted talks with the Iranian side in an Islamabad hotel for 21 hours. Another round of talks was planned and the US team was on its way to Islamabad when there was a breakdown in negotiations between Washington and Tehran. Pakistan, along with China, had been working to find a way to bring the two sides to agree on a plan of action that would resolve the issues that were being pursued by the two warring capitals.

On March 31, China and Pakistan issued a five-point statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and de-escalation; rapid peace talks; protection of civilian sites; opening of the Strait of Hormuz; and respect for the UN Charter. The reference to the UN document was to prevent the US and Iran from targeting civilian populations. On April 8, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sahrif thanked five countries in a social media post for their help in sealing the ceasefire deal. China topped the list of countries thanked by Sharif.

China joined Russia in casting its veto on a UN resolution that would have allowed for multinational military action to force Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. However, some informed analysts believe that China's appetite for expanding its diplomatic role in the Middle East is limited. "Beijing's priorities are more practical," said Ryan Hass, a former career diplomat and White House national security official, now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "They want reliable access to energy and inputs, and secure markets for their exports. They do not want to accept another region's security challenges as their own problems," he said.

Across the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to get China involved in playing a bigger role in the Middle East. On April 20, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called China's Xi Jinping to talk about the war. China has a history of involvement in the affairs of the region. In 2023, China helped finalise a diplomatic opening between Iran and Saudi Arabia after those countries had talked about further engagement for years. According to Saudi officials, China is seen in Riyadh as a vested party in relations between their counter and Iran. However, China, as is the case with other possible interlocutors, has uncertainty about the leadership situation in Tehran. After air attacks by the US and Israel that killed the country's top leadership, political power appears to have gone to the Islamic Revolutionary Grand Corps, or IRGC, which is interested in developing close ties with Beijing. The relationship with China would be patterned on Beijing's ties with Pakistan. China has given military aid to Pakistan over many years. It has helped Pakistan manufacture battle tanks and fighter aircraft. In the words of Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group, "I see more and more voices affiliated with the IRGC, now the real power in Iran, openly saying that the failure of Iran has been that it was too shy about aligning itself with China and Russia and was instead trying to preserve its independence. They say they need to mortgage out part of the country to end up where Pakistan is."

The reference to Pakistan having set aside some parts of its territory to China relates to the major highway Beijing has built connecting its Xinjiang Autonomous Region with the Pakistani Seaport at Gwadar. Called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, there are plans to extend it to Afghanistan and other countries in Central Asia. These countries were once part of what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the USSR. According to a study done by the US Pentagon using satellite imagery, these countries are rich in mineral resources. Accessing them through a road that runs via Pakistan would allow China to exploit these mineral riches. China already has a large mineral extracting project near Kabul.

CPEC-2 would provide China access to the sea not only through the Pakistani port of Gwadar but also through the Iranian port of Chabahar. This way, China would have an alternative route to bypass operations in the Arabian Sea, where the US is using its navy to enforce a blockade.