{"id":2399,"date":"2016-01-22T00:43:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T00:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2016\/01\/22\/chinas-foreign-policy-well-wishing\/"},"modified":"2016-01-22T00:43:44","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T00:43:44","slug":"chinas-foreign-policy-well-wishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/chinas-foreign-policy-well-wishing\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s foreign policy: Well-wishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Xi Jinping\u2019s tour of the Middle East shows China\u2019s growing stake there<\/p>\n

Jan 23rd 2016
BEIJING
From the print edition<\/p>\n

SINCE he took over as China\u2019s leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has been a busy globetrotter. Last year he visited more countries than Barack Obama, America\u2019s president (14 against 11). Heedless of whether his hosts are powerful, puny or pariahs, he has flown everywhere from America to the Maldives and Zimbabwe. Mr Xi wants to project China\u2019s rising power\u2014and his role in promoting that\u2014to foreign and domestic audiences. But until this week, he had not set a presidential foot in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

The trip, under way as The Economist <\/em>went to press, began in Saudi Arabia (whose king, Salman bin Abdul Aziz, is pictured with Mr Xi). He then visited Egypt and was due to finish his tour in Iran. No Chinese president had toured the region since 2009. China\u2019s leaders had worried about getting embroiled in the region\u2019s intractable disputes. But China has a big stake in the Middle East. It is the world\u2019s largest oil importer and gets more than half of its crude from the region (see chart). Mr Xi\u2019s much ballyhooed \u201cnew Silk Route\u201d, aimed at linking China and Europe with the help of Chinese-funded infrastructure, runs across the Middle East. Chinese companies are already building expressways and harbours there.<\/p>\n

The timing of Mr Xi\u2019s tour is tricky. Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are particularly high after Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric earlier this month and angry Iranians responded by storming the Saudi embassy in Tehran. But the lifting of Western sanctions on Iran on January 16th (see page 46) allowed Mr Xi to display even-handedness by visiting both countries, without upsetting Western powers. Mr Xi, like his predecessors, likes to present China as a non-interfering champion of peace. (Xinhua, China\u2019s state-run news agency, said this week that the West\u2019s \u201cmeddling hands\u201d were \u201cmore of a mortal poison than of a magic potion\u201d in the Middle East.) But Mr Xi is not keen to play a central role as peacemaker. China\u2019s first \u201cArab Policy Paper\u201d, released on January 13th, is a vague, waffly document. It talks of \u201cbuilding a new type of international relations\u201d, but is devoid of new ideas.<\/p>\n

Zhang Ming, a vice-foreign minister, said this week that economic development was the \u201cultimate way out\u201d of conflict in the region. By expanding its trade and investment links with the Middle East, China hopes discontent and conflict there will gradually dissipate. In addition to crushing dissent, it is trying a similar approach in Xinjiang, a province in western China with a large Muslim population\u2014so far without success.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the long run, China may find it hard to avoid taking sides. To some extent it has already done so in Syria: it talks to representatives from both the Syrian government and the opposition, but by vetoing UN resolutions on intervention it tilts, in effect, in the government\u2019s favour. The presence of a growing number of Chinese citizens in the Middle East may challenge China\u2019s non-interventionist approach. After a Chinese national was executed by Islamic State in November, China promised to strengthen protection of its citizens abroad. Its new rules of Middle Eastern diplomacy could end up resembling familiar Western meddling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Xi Jinping\u2019s tour of the Middle East shows China\u2019s growing stake there<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}