Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shake hands during an official welcoming ceremony prior to their meeting at Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran on January 23, 2016. (Pool / Iranian Presidency/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Revelations this week that China has helped Saudi Arabia build a facility for extracting uranium yellowcake, a step along the path towards nuclear energy and weapons, has underlined the increasingly influential role played by China in the Middle East.

In a new article in Tablet Magazine, Mike Doran and Peter Rough map China's strategic interests across the Middle East and the CCP's efforts to establish ports at choke-points for the global transportation of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. By building dual economic-military use facilities in the Middle East, supporting Iran and Russia's destabilizing activities, and courting American allies, the authors note that China is positioning itself to "have its thumb on the world's windpipe." Key takeaways are below.

Be sure to also check out Hudson's new Guide to the Trump Administration's China Policy Statements by our Director for Chinese Strategy Mike Pillsbury. It's a comprehensive collection of quotes by President Trump and administration officials on a range of topics including Sino-U.S. relations, trade, IP theft and the persecution of religious minorities. And join us next week for a very special event with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on the diplomatic, security, and economic challenges facing Taiwan.

Key Takeaways

Highlighted quotes from Mike Doran and Peter's article in Tablet Magazine, "China's Emerging Middle Eastern Kingdom." 

1. China sees the Middle East as an escape hatch from the Pacific:

“The first island chain”—the string of archipelagos stretching from the Kuril and Japanese Islands in the north, southward through Taiwan and the Philippines, and terminating in Borneo—hem in China from the east, turning the Asian behemoth into a peculiarly landlocked country. To date, Beijing has had no means of breaking out to the sea. But China’s new route through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean changes all that.

Beijing calls it the “China-Pakistan Economic Corridor” (CPEC), because Americans, whose thinking is steeped in harmonic convergence, drop their guard when they hear the word “economic.” In reality, the Pakistan-China relationship is a military alliance in all but name, directed at India. The corridor will terminate on the Indian Ocean at Gwadar, where a port is currently under construction with generous help from the Belt and Road Initiative.

2. Pakistan's port city of Gwadar is the next Djibouti:

While Beijing is now presenting Gwadar as an entirely commercial venture, upon completion it will certainly become a military base, which will assist Beijing in flanking India. CPEC will also shorten and harden China’s supply lines. Gwadar will serve as a transshipment hub for oil and natural gas and other raw materials that will flow overland through pipelines to Xinjiang, then on to points farther east in China.

To put the strategic import of the China-Pakistan link in quantifiable terms, the total distance from China to the Persian Gulf is over 5,000 nautical miles, through waters that, in time of war, will likely be impassable. By contrast, the distance from the Persian Gulf to Gwadar is less than 600 nautical miles.

3. The Middle East's energy choke-points are being targeted by China:

The offensive strategic potential of Djibouti and Gwadar are particularly notable. Djibouti guards the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a choke-point in the route between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, through which oil flows to Europe. Gwadar, for its part, is located just off the Gulf of Oman, situated within easy striking distance of the Strait of Hormuz, through which oil destined for India, Japan, and Taiwan must pass.

If Beijing were in a position to interdict the cargo passing through these two key Middle Eastern choke-points from its new bases in Djibouti and Gwadar, it would have its thumb on the world’s windpipe.

4. China's Uighur persecution is part of its Belt and Road strategy:

Xi’s signature foreign policy achievement is the Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion program that invests in infrastructure projects across the world designed to funnel resources back to a hungry China, thereby creating a global Chinese sphere of interest. 

The jewel in the crown of the Belt and Road Initiative is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor—a multibillion-dollar program to build highways, rail lines, and pipelines from the port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean to Xinjiang, the Uighur heartland. The northern terminus of the corridor is Kashgar—a Uighur city which, with cameras in every crevice, is likely the most surveilled metropolitan area in the world. China is crushing the Uighurs, in other words, because their territory sits athwart China’s critical overland supply routes.

5. Russia plays the role of China's stalking horse in the Middle East:

Vladimir Putin has treated Xi Jinping to lessons on how to erode American prestige on the cheap. In the Syrian civil war, Putin deployed a force that was not large enough to constitute a significant threat to American preeminence, but it was still strong enough to turn the tide of the war.

China’s involvement with Russia’s Syria campaign extended well beyond watching Putin meet with Erdogan and Netanyahu in Moscow on television. Chinese warships were a regular part of Russian naval deployments in the Mediterranean, and the canisters of gas that Bashar Assad’s forces dropped on civilians in the early parts of the war were made in China.

The behavior of Chinese diplomats at the U.N. is instructive. For at least two decades, they have mostly deferred to their Russian counterparts on the weightiest Middle Eastern issues, such as the Iranian nuclear deal and the Syrian conflict. If approached by American or European diplomats regarding Beijing’s position on an issue under debate, Chinese diplomats indicate that there is no point in discussing matters with them, because they will vote however the Russians decide to vote. By behaving as if Beijing has no independent policy, Chinese diplomats succeed in providing Russia with staunch support while appearing passive almost to the point of indifference. This ploy reinforces the American presumption that trade is all that China really cares about in the Middle East—and that Russia, not China, is the most serious challenger to American primacy in the region.

6. America's Middle East allies seek economic partnerships with China:

In an era of doubts about America’s long-term commitment to the Middle East, allies of the United States such as Saudi Arabia and Israel [have been forced] to hedge their bets by cultivating ties with Beijing. For American allies, the best way to gain entree to Beijing without annoying the Americans is by accepting its open invitation to engage economically. Indeed, China is now the number one trading partner of Saudi Arabia, from which it imports more oil than from any other country. Israel, for its part, receives significant capital investment from China along with high-level visits from Chinese military brass, and is employing a Chinese company to develop the port of Haifa—despite repeated American requests to cancel the contract.

7. While the U.S. and Allied forces eradicated ISIS in Iraq, China is reaping the rewards:

Beijing has singled out one Middle Eastern country for special attention. Between 2008 and 2018, bilateral trade with Iraq increased by over 1,000%, from $2.6 billion to more than $30 billion. Last year, China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Company agreed to a $1.39 billion deal to build a wide variety of projects in southern Iraq, including low-cost housing, education and medical facilities, and tourist centers.

Xi Jinping committed to an “oil for reconstruction program,” where China would construct a wide array of projects in Iraq, ranging from roads and airports, to hospitals, sewage systems, and schools, in return for 100,000 Iraqi barrels of oil per day. The United States military defeated the Islamic State for the Iraqi government, but it was Chinese companies, not American, that have reaped the rewards.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity

Go Deeper: China in the Middle East