Saudi Minister of State Musaad bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, Chinese Communist Party Politburo member Wang Yi, and Iranian Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani in Beijing, China, on March 10, 2023. (Luo Xiaoguang/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Next week Xi Jinping will visit Moscow to show his support for Vladimir Putin, which may further help to strengthen China’s international stature after Beijing successfully brokered a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In an essay for Tablet, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East Director Michael Doran explains how, by refusing to build an anti-Iran bloc of Gulf allies, Joe Biden is delivering the Middle East to China.

Key Insights

1. The drive for energy security places China on a collision course with the United States. 

Xi and his Asian rivals depend on energy that either originates in the Middle East or transits through it. If Xi can bring an end to America’s military primacy, then his own supply lines become more secure, and the supply lines of his rivals become more vulnerable. Most of America’s Asian allies—including Japan, South Korea, and Australia—depend on Middle Eastern energy. We can’t defend Taiwan alone. The military contest between the US and China in Asia, in other words, includes the struggle for mastery in the Middle East. While China’s military cannot supplant the United States today as a full dimensional security provider, that day is coming sooner rather than later. In the meantime, Beijing seeks to diminish America’s status by weakening its alliances.

2. The Middle East plays a special role in Xi’s plan to create a Beijing-led global economic system.

To create this economic system, Xi must protect China from the advantages that America enjoys due to the power of its capital markets, its leading position in advanced technologies, and the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency. Offsetting these advantages requires access to the vast capital reserves of the Gulf states, whose economies are booming.

3. American options are diminishing by the day. 

In the Middle East, the United States cannot outcompete China economically. The Chinese are now the world’s largest purchaser of oil from the region, and they are rapidly expanding their exports to the Middle East. As a great power patron, the only thing that distinguishes the US from China is its military might.

But the Biden team refuses to check Iran militarily. If that is the case, however, then what good is Washington to Saudi Arabia? Why wouldn’t Riyadh turn eastward?

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length. 

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