By Al-Fassel | 2023-11-04

China has been quick to put itself forward as a Middle East peacemaker amid the Israel-Hamas war, saying it is ready to coordinate with Egypt, but analysts say it lacks experience in this arena and is largely motivated by self interest.

They note that China has little experience as a conflict mediator, and cannot act with impartiality in the Middle East as it has cultivated a cozy bilateral relationship with Hamas ally Iran.

China has failed to directly condemn Hamas for its October 7 terrorist attack on Israel from Gaza, in which the Palestinian terrorist group killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 200 hostage, triggering the ongoing war.

Internet users in China have pointed out that the name "Israel" does not appear on online digital maps from Chinese tech titans Baidu and Alibaba, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.

This is "an ambiguity that matches Beijing's vague diplomacy in the region and contrasts with its attentiveness to maps generally," the newspaper said.

"What the Gaza strip needs most is efforts to stop the war and promote peace, not geopolitical calculations," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Palestinian Authority counterpart Riyad al-Maliki on October 23.

Yet China has been ratcheting up its strategic investments in the Middle East for years as part of its own geopolitical calculations -- to secure its trade routes, consolidate its interests and spread its hegemony.

In the Middle East, China has focused particular attention on investment projects in Egypt along the Suez Canal -- a critical gateway for global trade.

Egypt's Port Said and Ain Sokhna, Oman's Duqm and Saudi Arabia's Jizan also have been identified as key projects that China will develop as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Aggregates Business reported in November 2020.

Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on October 22 said that his country wants to deepen cooperation with Gulf countries.

And in a sign of its growing interest in the region, China last week sent a delegation of 300 to the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- aka "Davos of the Desert" -- which is double its previous attendance.

'Diplomatic blitz'

China's Middle East envoy Zhai Jun attended an October 21 "summit for peace" in Cairo as part of a Middle East tour, where he called for an "immediate ceasefire and an end to the fighting as quickly as possible."

The summit ended without an agreement.

Meeting with Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli on October 19 in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the two countries should work together to bring "more stability" to the Middle East.

With Russia's war in Ukraine, Beijing stood back for a year before releasing a proposal for a political settlement, the Washington Post reported October 22.

"Now, it has launched a diplomatic blitz within days of the attacks, describing itself as a 'friend to both Israel and Palestine,'" the newspaper said.

"For decades, China stayed well away from the intractable conflicts of the Middle East, but that has changed in recent years," it added, as China tries to match its economic influence with political clout.

But "Beijing's rising interest in playing global peacemaker has had limited success," the newspaper said, beyond the recent Iran-Saudi deal, which has yet to withstand the test of time.

China's Foreign Ministry has declined to comment on whether it will use its influence over Iran to try to restrain Hamas, the Washington Post added, "and it has little experience working directly with the militant group."

'No heavy lifting'

US officials doubt that China will engage in painstaking diplomacy along the lines of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's recent trip to the region, AFP reported.

The United States has repeatedly pressed China to play a greater role in the Middle East crisis commensurate with its global aspirations and urged it to use its influence over Iran's clerical rulers, who back Hamas.

Jonathan Fulton, an expert at the Atlantic Council on China's role in the Middle East, said that Beijing in its messaging saw the crisis "as an opportunity to score points on the US."

He said China likely hoped in turn to win support in the Arab and Islamic world for its priorities -- sidelining Taiwan, and rejecting US-backed allegations that Beijing is committing genocide against Uighur Muslims.

Analysts point to China's abysmal human rights record on the domestic front, in its treatment of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority group, and note the hypocrisy of it efforts to now paint itself as a humanitarian champion in the Middle East.

With its limited security and diplomatic resources in the Middle East, China has a twofold interest in keeping the United States focused on the crisis.

"Obviously for China, it is better if the US is bogged down in the Middle East and the Gulf," Fulton said.

"But if the US keeps providing the security architecture that maintains the Middle East, China is not going to have to do heavy lifting on its own."