ChinaMED Archive

February was an intense month in the context of relations between China and the countries in the larger Mediterranean region. In particular, while the visits of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif put Beijing’s traditional diplomatic balance between the two rivals in the Gulf to test, the accusations from the Turkish Ministry of...

The US and Israel were the main focus of the Chinese media in May. While the commentary pertaining to US policy was negative as usual, even Israel received criticism (a rare event in the Chinese discourse). The other articles reviewed in this issue of the Bulletin provide a more general update about the evolution of China's relations with the Mediterranean region.Both Chinese scholars, like...

Trends in Mediterranean debate regarding China have continued much as reported in our previous issues, with the exception of news concerning Iran. On 24 January the Islamic Republic News Agency reported on complaints made by the Iranian ambassador in Beijing to Vladimir Norov, the new Secretary-General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran has been an observer of SCO since 2005...

As the relations between China and the United States continue to worsen, public opinion in the Mediterranean region continues to grow increasingly fragmented and diversified. While the narrative surrounding China’s role in the region and its foreign and economic policies has become very clear in countries such as Iran and Israel, there are also growing tensions and uncertainties in other...

One of the main changes we see in July’s Mediterranean media is that the (potential) effects of the China-United States trade war and, more generally, the worsening of the relations between the two countries, has started to be discussed in relation to China’s role in the wider Mediterranean region. In comparison, it is important to note that Russia never made it into articles concerning...