For the past several years, the Middle East has been China’s key trading hub, not least because of more than 70 per cent of the oil that Beijing imports from here. Between 2017 and 2022, China’s bilateral trade with this region jumped from US$262 billion to US$507 billion. In 2022 alone, the region saw its trade with China jumping by more than 27 per cent. This was the largest increase in China’s trade compared with other regions, such as the ASEAN. China, as such, is already the single largest trading partner with many key Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Any geopolitical tension in the region should, therefore, involve Beijing as a major player. Yet, we don’t see China playing a geopolitically dominant role in the region. Compared with the US, Beijing continues to maintain a low-profile presence, avoiding getting entangled in regional conflicts. Why is this the case and how is Beijing able to avoid conflicts?
The Lame Accusations
First come the lame Western accusations that frame China’s success in avoiding conflicts as part of Beijing’s strategy to create chaos silently but intentionally. In an article published in Foreign Affairs, former US Deputy National Security Adviser, Matt Pottinger, and House Representative, Mike Gallagher, accused China of its “policy of fostering global chaos”. According to this argument, Beijing is able to avoid deep entanglements in conflicts purely because it helps create those conflicts in the first place to trap Washington and its allies. With the latter thus trapped, they find themselves unable to compete with China directly in economic terms. It leaves........