The only thing Saudi Arabia and Iran have in common is China. China is the country with the greatest stake in energy security and maritime navigation in the Middle East because it is the region’s main oil importer, unlike the United States, which does not buy oil from the Gulf and has become the world’s largest producer and exporter. Despite the enormous scale of its interests in the region, Beijing has a policy that is unlike that of the US to such an extent that it is sometimes difficult for us to understand it.
America has a well-known policy. Specifically, since Britain withdrew from East of Suez, it has pursued a policy consistent with its interests, aimed at protecting the flow of energy and confronting communist expansion. Nixon adopted a policy of supporting Iran and Saudi Arabia as regional powers. Then came the well-known Carter Doctrine, based on a commitment to use military force to protect the Gulf.
The Middle East is important to China, but it doesn’t yet act as a protector of its interests there. It possesses the world’s largest tanker fleet, yet its ships remain waiting outside the Strait of Hormuz. It also has a naval force in the Gulf of Aden, close to areas controlled by Yemen’s Houthi militia. Despite attacks, the Chinese force has not engaged them, and its tankers have remained waiting in the open sea.
The most likely explanation is that Chinese policymakers prefer not to become involved in the US-Iran war. They may even see the weakening of the Trump administration as serving their interests by refraining from intervening against Iran.
For the time being, Tehran has decided to allow some Chinese ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. But this flexibility came late, after the Americans opened a maritime corridor in Omani waters that was less vulnerable to Iranian attacks.
This maritime alternative was what prompted the Iranians to go to Baghdad and persuade them last week that their oil tankers would be exempted from attack and should use their maritime corridor, after most tankers had abandoned the Iranian route and sailed through the Omani corridor.
The war may end now, or it may continue for another year. But over the long term, China will follow the strategy previously pursued by the great powers, Britain and the US, to defend their interests: building a larger navy, establishing more military bases, entering into defence agreements and adopting a more openly partisan policy. But not now.
Today, China coexists with American dominance because, first, it benefits from ensuring the continued flow of oil; and second, because it has other priorities that are geographically and geopolitically distant – Taiwan, the South and East China Seas, and then the Pacific and Indian oceans.
China’s policy is somewhat strange to us. Historically, we have been accustomed to dealing with the old international system of competing blocs by aligning ourselves with one camp or another: the French or the British, the Axis or the Allies, the Soviet Union or the US.
In the Middle East and Africa, Beijing is friends with everyone. This makes its policy easy to deal with, while at the same time making it difficult to understand.China appears contradictory. It is the biggest buyer from the warring Gulf states, while also being the largest trading partner of both Saudi Arabia and Iran. China is also Israel’s second-largest trading partner, while at the same time supporting the Palestinian cause!
It is expected that the dull Chinese neutrality we see today will diminish as its interests grow and, at times, come into conflict with one another. China ‘does not want to be another America’, meaning a hegemonic power. It has said this repeatedly. But there is enough evidence to suggest that the Dragon Empire is coming.
[by Abdulrahman Al-Rashed in Asharq Al-Awsat]
Compiled and translated by Faizul Haque