October 2018

There are several interesting elements that emerged in October’s Chinese publications on the Mediterranean region, from the apparent resignation about the failure of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) between the P5+1 and the Islamic Republic of Iran to the media silence on Vice President Wang Qishan’s visit to Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Besides some optimist-but-vague commentaries on the relations between China and the Middle East within the Belt and Road framework,[1] it seems that Chinese media and scholars have become more reticent in articulating China’s own position.

Chinese media have published many articles on Iran and the sanctions that US President Donald Trump reinstated on November 5. Some, such as a recent article written by Wu Xinbo, the prominent Director of Fudan University’s American Studies Center, view the JPOA’s demise as evidence of America’s return to unilateralism and, accordingly, the end of the American hegemony.[2] Yet, while a consensus on the need to resist American pressure has clearly emerged in China, it seems that defending the JPOA is not part of the plan. China decreased its imports of crude oil from Iran possibly to receive a waiver granted by the United States to eight countries (Turkey, Italy, India, Japan, South Korea, India, China, and the UAE) allowing the continued purchase of Iranian oil with a promise to reduce the quantity and, in some cases, barring the import country from paying with American Dollars. Echoing this sentiment in the Global Times, a Chinese diplomat expressed that for Chinese companies, “this is surely not a good moment to enter Iran.”[3] Mostly, it appears that Chinese companies are invited, at their own risk, to try preserving their presence in Iran as they wait for better times to come.[4] Compared to previous months, the rhetoric has significantly toned down. The return to this wait-and-see approach is significant if one considers the fact that the JPOA had previously being described as a platform on which China and other potential partners, such as European countries and Russia, could stand together against American unilateralism. Traditionally, China’s Middle Eastern diplomacy has been subjugated to the status of Sino-American relations, and it seems that this situation has not significantly changed.

The centrality of the United States within Chinese diplomacy can be seen in the responses of Chinese scholars about the death of Jamal Khashoggi, a well-known Saudi journalist, at the Saudi consulate in Ankara. Rather than focusing on why the journalist was killed, much of the analyses published within the Chinese media focused on President Trump’s reaction to the news. According to Teng Jianqun, the Director of the Department for American Studies of the China Institute for International Studies, the Trump administration has been cautious to criticize Saudi Arabia because it, together, with Israel, is a pillar of Trump’s Middle Eastern strategy.[5] In another article, Teng noted that America’s stated reluctance to sanction Saudi Arabia over the death of Khashoggi due to fears of creating an opportunity for China and Russia to strengthen their influence over the Arab country is just an excuse to cover the greedy pragmatism that drives the Saudi-American relationship.[6] Yet, other Chinese observers argued that the current warming up of Saudi-Russian relations is far from surprising given the influence that Moscow plays both in the international oil market and within Middle Eastern politics.[7] On October 25, the sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia put USD 500 million into the joint Russia-China Investment Fund (RCIF), a decision Chinese media attribute to the Saudi Crown Prince’s reform-oriented agenda. Another article reported on commentary given by some Russian analysts who have described this move as an intention to send a warning to the United States. However, representatives of the Liaowang Institute, an institute under the Xinhua News Agency, do not express this thought directly within the article.[8] Chinese commentators note that Saudi Arabia and its leaders face a significant public relations challenge that will take some time to be fully resolved.[9] Yet, they do not expect Saudi Arabia to change its foreign policy course vis-à-vis the United States since both countries mutually depend on each other.[10]

In previous issues of the ChinaMed Bulletin, we noted the importance of Wang Qishan’s position as chief representative of the Chinese delegation to the fourth meeting of the China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation. In October, he went to Israel and several other countries in the Middle East to boost the China’s relations within the region. However, while his trip was given great attention by foreign media, the Chinese media simply published short reports issued by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for each of the stops that Wang made along the way. It is difficult to say why such a high-profile trip was almost ignored domestically. Currently, there is a general tendency within the Chinese media to downplay the political side of China’s presence and moves in the Middle East as compared to the past. For example, Ma Xiao from Fudan University noted that what foreign observers say about the port of Haifa and other ports managed by Chinese companies makes no sense: a commercial investment is far from evidence of any intention to create a military presence in countries close to the West.[12] Ports, in any case, remain important targets for Chinese investments, as clearly shown in the third article in a series about the opportunities and challenges in investing in Mediterranean countries.[13] However, these are not riskless investments because, as seen in Algeria, Chinese workers can easily fall victim to robberies and other attacks.  As reported in July, these Chinese workers can also be exploited by Chinese companies which send them to other countries without following the relevant legal procedures. Moreover, although not discussed within the Chinese media, the legal dispute between DP World and the China Merchants Port over the management of the Doraleh Container Terminal in Djibouti continues to worsen.

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