The Red Star and the Crescent China and the Middle East

JAMES REARDON-ANDERSON (Editor) The Red Star and the Crescent China and the Middle East HURST & COMPANY, LONDON Published in Collaboration with Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University–Qatar First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL © James Reardon-Anderson, 2018 All rights reserved. Printed in India The right of James Reardon-Anderson to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 9781849048217 This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable and managed sources. www.hurstpublishers.com CONTENTS vii xi About the Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: China and the Middle East James Reardon-Anderson 1 PART I THE BIG PICTURE 1. China’s Search for Security in the Greater Middle East Andrew Scobell 2. China, the United States, and the Middle East Jon B. Alterman 3. The China Model and the Middle East Mehran Kamrava 13 37 59 PART II CASE STUDIES 4. China’s Military Relations with the Middle East Degang Sun 5. China and Turkey: Sailing Through Rough Waters Altay Atlı 6. China and the Iran Nuclear Negotiations: Beijing’s Mediation Effort John W. Garver 7. China and Iraq Joseph Sassoon 83 103 123 149 PART III “ONE BELT, ONE ROAD” 8. Silk Roads and Global Strategy: China’s Quest v Stephen Blank 171 CONTENTS 9. Choosing not to Choose: The Belt and Road Initiative and the Middle East Andrew Small 189 PART IV DOMESTIC FACTORS IN CHINA-MIDDLE EAST RELATIONS 10. Hajjis, Refugees, Salafi Preachers, and a Myriad of Others: An Examination of Islamic Connectivities in the Sino-Saudi Relationship Mohammed Turki Al-Sudairi 11. China’s Uyghurs: A Potential Time Bomb James M. Dorsey 207 241 Notes Index 261 313 vi INTRODUCTION CHINA AND THE MIDDLE EAST James Reardon-Anderson This book brings together recent scholarship on China’s relations with the Middle East and more narrowly the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf—a topic that has hitherto attracted too little attention from policy-makers and scholars. The most important reason for this new-found focus is a new confluence of interests: China needs oil and gas, and the major oil producers in the Gulf need the Chinese market. Despite the decline in China’s economic growth, its residents remain dependent on imports of energy, and the world’s biggest suppliers are in the Gulf. Currently, more than half of China’s crude oil imports come from the Gulf—the leading suppliers being (in order) Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, and Iraq. One can imagine that the details of this picture will change, as China’s economy, world oil prices, and supply lines fluctuate, but it is highly unlikely that China’s dependence on Middle East oil (and secondarily natural gas) will decline any time soon. No significant decline in China’s needs is likely to occur within the lifetime of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration, which will run to the early 2020s and perhaps beyond. It is not that the Middle East has been or is likely to be the highest priority for Chinese policy-makers. It is understandable that in the past, and more likely that in the future, Beijing has paid and will pay more attention to the 1 THE RED STAR AND THE CRESCENT Great Powers—the United States, Russia, and Europe—and that China has been and will remain a regional rather than a global power, whose historical traditions and immediate interests reside on the country’s periphery—both land borders and surrounding waters. Yet beyond these priorities, the Middle East is and is likely to remain a focus of China’s attention. The same might be said of the countries in the Middle East. Until recently, China meant little to this region, which has been, and to a large extent remains, focused on its own problems and beholden to its main patron and protector, the United States. But things have changed in recent years, as the phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy has created a corresponding demand for energy and the United States has been both distracted from and demonstrably less able to provide the leadership that countries in the region have come to expect or hope for. Countries in the Gulf that lead the world in petroleum reserves, production, and exports, now and in the future, will see China as an important (currently their single largest) market. As the demand for oil imports into the US falls, and as world prices decline, the petroleum exporting countries of the Gulf increasingly “look east” to China, and also to East, Southeast, and South Asia as the most promising markets. In recent years (2013 and 2014), the percentage of crude oil exports that went from the major Gulf producers to Asia were: from Iraq 58 percent, from Saudi Arabia 68 percent, and from Iran 80 percent. In all cases, China now occupies and is likely to remain the region’s largest market, while the overall shift in oil exports to the east reinforces the structure of regional and global security arrangements. Although the numbers and other details may fluctuate, there is little reason to think that energy trade, which now dominates all aspects of SinoMiddle East relations, will change any time soon. This is the bedrock of the relationship; the major policy choices involve how to deal with this fact. While energy trade is by far the most important consideration, this topic has been described elsewhere, so the chapters in this volume are designed to deal more with the implications of trade than with the trade itself, and to explore resultant or tangential issues. One of these issues is how to deal with the other great powers that are external to the region, most notably the United States. Despite recent developments, the US remains the principal keeper of security within the region and of the supply lines that connect the Gulf to its eastern (and all other) markets. The Gulf states and the Chinese recognize that they depend on the US for regional stability and secure supply lines. The Chinese may chafe at the assertion that they are “free riders,” enjoying the fruits of this trade without paying their share to protect it. But both Beijing 2 INTRODUCTION and states within the region are acutely aware that they need the American security presence, as well as a positive relationship with the United States, and this realization places constraints on policy-makers on all sides. Finally, an issue that weighs heavily on both China and its partners in the Middle East is Islamic extremism or, as others see it, the rights of Muslims in China (and elsewhere) to practice their religious and cultural traditions. For China, this means limiting outside support for the Uyghurs, a Turkic and Islamic minority in China’s far western region of Xinjiang, not quite adjacent but near enough to the countries of the Middle East, whom Beijing views as a source of the “three evils”—separatism, extremism, and terrorism. For those who sympathize with the Uyghurs, it means supporting their legitimate rights to practice Islam and sustain their linguistic and cultural traditions. This book has been designed as a conversation among the authors. We have tried to avoid either extreme: of forcing the contributors’ diverse approaches into a uniform account of the subject, or inviting a “hundred flowers” that offer color and diversity at the expense of coherence. Our goal, rather, has been to put together a group of chapters that draw on the effort and creativity of the various authors, while at the same time speak to one another in a conversation that makes sense and enriches our understanding. We have approached this goal in two ways: first, by inviting the authors to meet, exchange drafts, and discuss their separate and shared interests as the project proceeded; and second, in the final round, to present them with the three most broad-gauged papers—those by Andrew Scobell, Jon B. Alterman, and Mehran Kamrava—and invite them to engage with the major themes of these papers—agreeing, disagreeing, or showing why they take a different tack. In the opening chapter, Andrew Scobell explains the apparent mismatch between China’s growing interests in the Middle East and the limited resources or efforts it expends to defend these interests. Scobell concludes that there are two major reasons for this mismatch: first, from a geostrategic perspective, China conserves its limited diplomatic and military resources for the primary goals of maintaining security within China and around the country’s immediate periphery; and second, from a constructivist perspective, China draws on both a cultural proclivity and historical experience to minimize commitments and the expenditure of resources far from its borders. Scobell argues that with regard to the former geostrategic considerations, China sees greater opportunities and is willing to commit greater resources in the regions that lie between China and the Middle East—namely, Central and South Asia—while viewing the Middle East per se as more remote and thus less 3 THE RED STAR AND THE CRESCENT central to China’s interests. With regard to the latter, constructivist factors, Scobell points out that Chinese culture provides for a low level of trust, especially toward outsiders, and thus a disinclination to form alliances, while placing a higher value on status and symbolism, thus favoring broad statements of principle over concrete actions. Similarly, historical experiences have taught the Chinese to concentrate on the unity of the empire and low cost security arrangements with the surrounding states, while alliances and other forms of partnership have not worked out to China’s satisfaction. All of these factors have made Beijing commitment averse. In the chapter that follows, Jon B. Alterman adopts a similar view of China’s goals and policies, as he examines the relationship between China and the United States in the Middle East. Alterman explores the US-China relationship from two angles. First, he compares the roles of the two powers in this region. The US entered the Middle East during the Cold War, when the rivalry with the Soviet Union prompted Washington to seek superiority within the region. Decades later, when the Soviet Union is no more and US global dominance is in decline, Washington has been less expansive and must choose among the objectives that merit the commitment of scarce resources. China, by contrast, has entered this region later, with more limited goals and with a less expansive sense of its own role. As its interests in the region grow, China must decide what tools it will develop to protect those interests. Second, Alterman traces the recent relations between China and the United States in the Middle East. Both countries seek to avoid conflict and maintain stability in this region, while at the same time eyeing each other with some suspicion. The question for China is: How permissive will the US be to China’s expansion westward? On the one hand, Washington welcomes China as a “responsible stakeholder” and contributor to the anti-piracy campaign off the coast of Somalia, UN peacekeeping operations, and the like. On the other hand, the US maintains close ties with China’s rivals, such as India, Japan, and Australia; has opposed China’s efforts to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); and has excluded China from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), before abandoning this venture itself. The question for the United States is: Will China’s growing role undermine or support the US in this region? China needs the US to maintain security of supply lines and poses no fundamental alternative to the Western global order, yet China’s growing power can facilitate or complicate Washington’s priorities. In Chapter 3, Mehran Kamrava considers the “China model” and its appeal to regimes and publics in the Middle East, both as a political symbol 4 INTRODUCTION and as a practical alternative for governmental and economic reform. The “China model,” in a crude, symbolic sense of promising rapid economic growth under an authoritarian government overseeing a mixed economy, appeals to those governments and elites in the Middle East that are disillusioned by American failures, annoyed by American lecturing, and who now fear abandonment as Washington grows less assertive abroad and more preoccupied with internal affairs. China, lacking the baggage of long standing engagement in the Middle East and promising trade and aid with no strings attached, appeals to both publics and policy-makers throughout the region. At a deeper analytical level, however, Kamrava finds that the “China model” depends on the effective institutional capacities and public acceptance that are distinct, even unique, features of China and other developmental states in East Asia, where state formation preceded the inclusion of popular classes and where statesmen enjoyed wide latitude in choosing policies and practices. Viewed from this angle, the “China model” appears inapplicable to the states of the Middle East, which were formed later, and whose statesmen must cater to the demands of the popular classes. Comparing these two dimensions, Kamrava concludes that the “China model” acts as a symbol to justify the reign of authoritarian regimes and the attraction of China as an alternative to the United States, whereas there is little potential for any of these states to adopt the actual “China model” as a basis for their own political and economic development. Part II examines individual states to show how each of them views and deals with the other(s). Three of the authors follow lines similar to those outlined by Andrew Scobell and Jon B. Alterman: that China’s approach in the Middle East has been incremental and cautious. From the eastern end of the continent, Sun Degang argues that China sees the Middle East as a “market” and that its military force has entered the region to safeguard China’s geoeconomic interests, such as energy, investments, and trade. By contrast, Sun points out, China has not sought to establish hard military bases, on the model of the United States and other Western powers. In Beijing’s view, economic relations and military dependencies provide greater influence at a lower cost than do hard military bases. China’s military ties in the Middle East vary from the long-term to the ad hoc. The former include China’s naval fleet to deal with piracy off the coast of Somalia, the newly established logistical base in Djibouti, and UN peacekeeping forces throughout the region. The latter include military exchanges and arms sales, the deployment of security contractors, joint military exercises, the evacuation of overseas Chinese nationals, and 5