China Makes Moves in Middle East After Biden's Frosty Reception

Royal Saudi Air Force jets painted red and yellow streaks in the sky above Riyadh's airport on December 7 as Xi Jinping stepped onto the tarmac under the colors of the Chinese flag to begin a visit that had been previewed as an "epoch-making milestone" in China's relations with the Arab world.

Comparisons with Joe Biden's frosty summer reception by Saudi Arabia were hard to avoid. The American president managed a fist bump with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but the kingdom failed to greet him with the full purple carpet welcome accorded to the Chinese leader.

After more than two years of self-imposed pandemic isolation, Xi's third overseas travel in as many months followed trips to Central Asia and Southeast Asia. In Astana and Samarkand in September, Xi courted statesmen in Moscow's former stomping ground. In Bali and Bangkok last month, he rubbed elbows with counterparts like Biden to mend a years-long downturn in relations with the West.

Over three days in Riyadh, in meetings with the Saudi leadership, the Gulf Arab states and the Arab League, China's president sought to highlight his role as a champion for the global south, while deepening existing economic interests and further undermining the U.S.'s complicated legacy in a region where Beijing was already successfully challenging Washington's soft power.

The Middle East is a major geographical component of Xi's signature Belt and Road Initiative, a vast cooperation framework to support the export of Chinese infrastructure, technologies and other traditional and emerging industries. The BRI has the backing of nearly all Arab nations, whose collective coastlines form a "maritime Silk Road" linking China's commercial and energy trade from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea.

"The reason why there was a bit of pomp and circumstance was because it was one of the first international visits by Xi after a two-year hiatus," said Iain MacGillivray, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's office in Washington, D.C. "It was about presenting that China is back in global affairs."

Regional capitals keen to harness China's status as a diverse industrial powerhouse increasingly welcome Beijing's no-strings-attached economic engagement, which allows them to pick and choose arrangements that suit their development goals without overly concerning themselves with democracy, human rights and the rule of law, the holy trinity of universal values found on the lips of every other Western interlocutor.

The OPEC+ oil cartel's decision to cut petroleum production by some 2 million barrels per day in October, at a time when Biden was struggling to keep down gas prices ahead of the midterms, demonstrated the limits of U.S. pressure on Saudi Arabia, while Xi's visit to the kingdom also proved China's utility as a hedge against Western arm-twisting.

Despite Washington's displeasure and more promises to review U.S.-Saudi ties, Riyadh appeared certain that its decades-long supply of American arms wouldn't be interrupted. In the meantime, it inked dozens of investment deals with Beijing, agreements that covered everything from renewable energy to information technology.

Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf states, continues to serve as an alternate marketplace for Chinese technologies, like those of telecommunications company Huawei, whose 5G infrastructure has been shunned by the West over cybersecurity concerns. China's home-grown Beidou satellite navigation system, a rival to America's GPS, has also found testing grounds in the Middle East in addition to uptake in Asia and Africa.

"For Saudi Arabia, it's important to get Chinese investment in projects like Neom as it shifts away from its oil resources and oil dependence," MacGillivray told Newsweek, referring to Prince Mohammed's $500 billion future city, the centerpiece of the kingdom's post-petroleum era.

China's Mideast Stake

The inaugural talks between Xi and the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council—the Riyadh-headquartered economic bloc composed of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—were aimed at wide-ranging cooperation in areas such as trade, finance, high technology and aerospace. However, mutual commercial interests are traditionally driven by energy.

More than half of China's crude oil was imported from Gulf Arab states last year. Saudi Arabia, accounting for 18 percent, is Beijing's top supplier, while Qatar is expected to become its largest source of liquefied natural gas as part of a history-making deal set to run for 27 years. China, in turn, counts itself as the Arab world's largest trading partner.

There's diplomatic clout to be had at the table of regional powerbrokers, too. A confident Xi, with long-term energy security in mind, told the Gulf leaders that he wanted to settle oil and gas contracts in Chinese yuan, a bold message that sought to further internationalize China's currency in an industry and region pegged to the U.S. dollar.

A "petroyuan," subject-matter experts said, was a long way away. But Xi's remarks in Riyadh were consistent with his intention to offer up Beijing as a viable political partner in all domains, undercutting the United States in the process. Beneficiaries of China's increased trade volume in the region have no reason not to let Xi say his piece.

"China sees in the Arab world a very big concentration of countries that suffered under mostly Western colonial aggression," said Tuvia Gering, a researcher with the Diane and Guilford Glazer Israel-China Policy Center at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

"To them, it's not just historically, but in more contemporary times," Gering told Newsweek. "They see themselves as sharing the same history and suffering under the same pressures from the U.S.-led West, so it ties conveniently to modern narratives in China about great power competition."

Beijing's "comprehensive strategic partnership" with Riyadh, for instance, includes coordination at the United Nations in support of each other's core interests. The kingdom, home to some of Islam's holiest sites, has co-signed joint statements objecting to Western scrutiny of China's policies in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, where the U.N. Human Rights Office has identified abuses against Uyghurs and other mainly Muslim minority groups.

"It's a situation where they scratch one another's strategic backs, and Xinjiang is especially important," Gering said. "When the custodian of the two holy mosques, Mecca and Medina, says that your policies in Xinjiang are A-OK, it doesn't matter how many reports Michelle Bachelet releases, they immediately lose their sting."

In return, Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, could expect no public unease from Xi about the young royal's alleged involvement in the 2019 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Beijing has long encouraged traditional U.S. allies and partners to seek more "strategic autonomy," which directly concerns America's ability to coordinate decisions like sanctions against Russia, or high-tech decoupling from China. Riyadh's decision to rebuff Washington on oil production was widely praised among Chinese experts, some of whom felt Saudi recourse to Beijing was to thank, according to translations in Gering's newsletter, Discourse Power.

Regional stakeholders also play the U.S. and China against each other, Gering said. "The local countries have agency. They are very cognizant of the competition. They don't want to be dragged into it; they do want to benefit from it."

Speaking in the White House briefing room as Xi visited Riyadh, John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, said China's objectives in the region were "not conducive to preserving the international rules-based order." Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, said later in the week: "We do not believe in polarization or in choosing between sides."

"Middle East countries are hedging and using Chinese influence as a way of drawing more out of Western powers," MacGillivray said. "It's about using their status as powers within the region to hedge and extract benefits from each side."

Security Deficit

China has pursued a unique balancing act in the Middle East, befriending both ends of the geopolitical impasse in a way that suits its hands-off approach to turmoil beyond its borders. Since Xi's first visit to Saudi Arabia in 2016, the Chinese leader has also increased economic and security cooperation with Iran, taking part in tripartite naval drills with Russia in the Gulf of Oman earlier this year.

Just as Beijing's deepening trade agenda for the region has led to increased engagement in political affairs, it now has some early ideas about regional security, too. Building on historical support for a political settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and its current critical role in the Iran nuclear negotiations, China in September proposed "a new security architecture in the Middle East," a nebulous concept Xi repeated during his summit with leaders of the Arab League.

"China urges the international community to respect the role of the Middle East people as masters of their own affairs," China's president said, before tying the proposal to his own "Global Security Initiative," Xi's vision to dismantle the U.S.-led postwar security order in Asia.

An eagerness to offer "Chinese wisdom" to the Middle East's problems is symbolic of Xi's decade in power, during which time he has thrown off the humble shackles of his predecessors to raise his country's stature on the international stage. Welcome or not, his offer signals to China's domestic audience Beijing's growing influence abroad and its capacity to advise others on successful governance.

However, China's exact role in realizing its peacekeeping recipe remains unclear. A frequent critic of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere, Beijing knows all too well the political, economic and military costs of becoming involved. Its willingness to do so is also a matter of constant debate.

"China is cautiously increasing its presence in the Middle East, driven more by Middle Eastern states than its own ambitions," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "China sees the Middle East as volatile and an area still dominated by the United States. They are cautious about getting sucked into the region's conflicts."

To be sure, Beijing sees uncertainties in the maritime routes through which its commercial and energy interests flow. China has established only one overseas military base, in Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden, but more economic engagement with the region means it has more to lose in geopolitical chokepoints in peacetime and in wartime.

At the same time, there's a risk of overstating Chinese ambitions to supplant the security umbrella underwritten by the U.S., from which China also has benefited. Beijing therefore may be ready to deride the credibility of American security commitments in the region, but it won't stick its neck out, in what political scientists call "free-riding."

"As I understand China's ambition, it's to rise in global power without following the path of the United States," Alterman told Newsweek. "That means avoiding alliances of any kind, and being more deliberate about its military footprint. China thinks that it can get what it wants using mostly trade and diplomacy. That's not to say China doesn't want influence in the Middle East, but it does mean they are uninterested in taking the path the United States did to get there."

Ned Price, the State Department spokesperson, said the U.S. goal is "to give countries the most attractive choice and to make the United States the most attractive choice in terms of what we bring to the table." China, it would seem, is aiming for something similar, safe in the knowledge that no one expects it to share American defense burdens in the region.

"We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran," Biden told a roundtable of Arab leaders in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah during his visit.

But the kingdom and its neighbors will quietly diversify their economic links where they can, including in more sensitive areas such as Chinese-made advanced weapons systems.

"I say to my American friends and colleagues that I wouldn't be so complacent about U.S. predominance in the Middle East," Gering said, "because in many fields, it's already second and third to China, economically and increasingly on security."

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