January 2018

From the protests in Iran to Turkey's intervention in Syria, January was an eventful month for the Mediterranean region. Chinese media and commentators did not shy away from putting forward their opinions.

Turkey is taking a great military and strategic risk with its "Olive Branch" operation. Li Weijian and Sun Degang, two scholars from Shanghai International Studies University, pointed out that Turkey hopes to keep the temporal and geographical scope of the military intervention limited to completely eliminate the possibility of the US using the Kurds as a tool to control Turkish foreign policy. According to them, this is the first step for Turkey to reposition itself as a regional power finally independent from Western influence. Xinhua's reporters also interpreted Turkey's actions as the final attempt to destroy a threat which the West has long used to blackmail the government in Ankara.

However, as pointed out by Tang Jianduan, Turkey is walking on thin ice. While the relations between Ankara and Washington continue to worsen, Turkey is apparently, and perhaps wrongly, assuming that Russia's silence is something more than just a short-term and selfish form of consent. Tang is not the only one to point out that Turkey's room for strategic maneuvering is extremely limited now that it is directly involved in areas where Russia and the US are fighting for regional hegemony. Former Ambassador to Iran Hua Liming also weighed in on this issue by pointing out that the Kurds are positioned to play a key role within the American strategy in the Middle East in order to challenge the Russian and Iranian influence in Syria.

This move by Turkey is not only a risk for the country itself but is also a further challenge to the US position in the region. In the Global Times, Former Chinese Ambassadors Wu Zhenglong and Sun Haichao wrote that deep cracks in the relationship between the US and Europe are clearly emerging, especially over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) on the Iranian nuclear issue. Trump's "deal diplomacy" is seen in Europe as blackmail, thereby weakening the influence and bargaining power of the West as a whole. On the contrary, argued Wu, China and Russia has become key supporters of the nuclear deal and regional order at large. Therefore, whatever Trump thinks or says about the JCPA holds little value.

Yet, the weakening of the US does not mean that Iran is doing well. Years of diplomatic and economic sanctions deeply weakened Iran's economic and social fabric and the future of the country is increasingly uncertain. Xiamen University's Fan Hongda wrote that although the situation in the country is still under control and the Iranian leadership has done well on the foreign policy side, years of external diplomatic and economic pressures have severely damaged the socio-economic fabric of Iran. The protests in early January were a loud call for the Iranian government to rebalance its efforts between foreign and domestic policy. Hua Liming also invited Chinese readers to interpret those protests as a symptom of the serious problems that currently plague Iranian society. According to him, the protests are turning into a bigger threat to the Islamic regime than the Iranian leaders had foreseen. Although the regime has proven extremely resilience vis-à-vis external pressure, the former Ambassador seems skeptic about its capability to successfully solve the economic problems at the root of the protests.Similarly, Fudan University's cyber security expert Shen Yi pointed out that the decision of the Iranian government to block social media and Internet access in some parts of the country and blame foreign hostile forces will hardly turn out to be a decisive solution to the current problems. According to Shen, what is happening in Iran is similar to what happened during the so-called Arab Spring and even during the US elections: external forces might try to use social media to influence the domestic political situation, but they can succeed only when the society is already deeply divided and the discontent already widespread among the different social groups. Therefore, the situation is extremely serious.

According to an editorial published by the Global Times, the events in Iran show the risks associated with a divided society combined with the pernicious capability of Western media to create narratives in favor of the protesters that undermine the position of the government.

Yet, despite the worsening geopolitical situation, Chinese state-owned companies continue to make inroads in the region. China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau (CPPB) has recently completed the construction of a pipeline in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia. As highlighted by the Deputy General Manager of CPPB, this project confirms the excellent work done by the company in recent years in bringing Chinese-developed technology to the market. Indeed, between 60% and 80% of the components used by CPPB in its projects in Iraq and Saudi Arabia are designed and produced in China. At the same time, the Power Construction Corporation of China finished building Algeria's first large-scale photovoltaic plant. The plant was meant to be the flagship engineering project resulting from the cooperation between China and Algeria within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.