The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Dr. Mohammed Alsudairi – lecturer in Politics and International Relations (The Arabian Peninsula, China and the Middle East), Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at Australian National University – and Dr. Andrea Ghiselli – lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology at the University of Exeter and head of research of the TOChina Hub – ChinaMed Project – and both co-authors of “Narratives of Sino-Middle Eastern Futures: In the Eye of the Beholder” (Cambridge University Press 2025) is the 483rd in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”
Examine the role of the Middle East in China-U.S. strategic competition.
The aim of the book is to push back against the dominant narrative of ongoing U.S.-China competition in the Middle East. The Chinese debate we examine suggests that while there were some who had advocated for a more proactive strategy in the region over the past decade, a stable consensus has held out cautioning against a fundamental shift in Chinese transactional approaches in the Middle East.
Without a doubt, China seeks to expand and deepen its economic and technological ties with the region and especially with the capital-rich states of the Arabian Peninsula. However, its policymakers and policymaking-adjacent elites do not perceive it as a critical arena of priority entangled with their national security concerns – and in contrast to say, East or Southeast Asia. At best, it is one of secondary or tertiary importance.
This stands in contrast with the U.S. which projects a vision of intense geopolitical competition wherever in the world China has a footprint – the escalating “push-back” in South America is illustrative of this. What we show is that there is a disconnect between the views found in Washington, Beijing, and of regional capitals, with the latter two not sharing the strategic readings of the former. This has implications to the viability of top-down interpretations of great power rivalry in the Middle East and forces us to rethink our basic assumptions about China’s intentions in the region, and what local actors want and do in turn.
Compare and contrast elite perspectives from China, Saudi Arabia, and Syria under the former Assad regime on China’s role in the region.
We contend that elite perspectives across China, Saudi Arabia, and Assadist Syria – examined in the period of 2010-2023 – reveal distinct positions, yet all share in a recognition of the limits of China playing a substantive security role within a region undergoing fundamental transitions.
It can be said that Chinese elites have a rather ambivalent view of the region. There are important economic, energy, and diplomatic factors that make the Middle East important to China. Yet, continued instability there and the fact that Beijing’s “core interests” lie elsewhere reduces the Middle East on the ladder of Chinese external priorities. Certainly, China wants to continue strengthening ties with the region, but only as long as that does not entail any deeper political or security involvement.
Saudi elites project the Kingdom as a reformist and modernizing hub of a new regional order and consider China an indispensable economic partner and a useful counterweight to Washington (i.e., enabling them to extract concessions), while recognizing that the Chinese are not willing to offer more in a substantive sense. It is clear that these elite still prefer the U.S. as a security partner, but if this cannot be maintained, their alternative preference is to pursue strategic autonomy, predicated on diversified defense partnerships and a build-up of their military-industrial complex, all while becoming a regional anchor in a post-American future. They are not courting a new security patron.
In Assadist Syria, the then civil war-beleaguered elites celebrated China as a “friend-state” (dalwa sadiqa) opposed to U.S. hegemony and a catalyst for a global multipolarization trend that might have positive implications for the Middle East over the long-run. Yet, even within this discourse, Beijing was not imagined as a military ally or a potential savior, except in a narrow economic sense, and even that was soured by disillusionment in the later years, reflecting a sober acknowledgment of the limits of China’s willingness and capabilities in the eyes of a quintessentially anti-American elite. In that sense, the elites of Assadist Syria, much like Saudi Arabia, did not have China as a security actor in their mental mapping of regional/global dynamics.
We would like to flag why we chose to scrutinize the perspectives of Saudi and Assadist Syrian elites. We believe that these two specific case studies, aside from the word count restraints we were facing, are in many ways representative of existing views across the region. Both of their states stand at opposite ends of the region-wide spectrum related to ideological alignments (pro/anti-American) and national capabilities. Their elites furthermore capture the general attitudes we are likely to encounter in other states across the Middle East from Turkiye, Algeria, Egypt to Iran and beyond: whether due to deep socialization into China’s diplomatic-speak and vision of its foreign policy, or out of rational national calculations and the pursuit of substantive independence, regional elites neither expect, nor actively want, deeper Chinese political and security involvement in the region. Put simply, if one hegemon recedes, they do not want to replace it with another.
Analyze the two clusters of regional actors – “irrelevant extremes” and “consequential swing states” – and their function in reshaping the regional order vis-à-vis great power competition.
At the end of our book, as we draw region-wide insights from our case studies, we introduce the categories of “irrelevant extremes” and “consequential swing states” to clarify how regional actors differently affect the trajectory of great-power politics. We suggest that the irrelevant extremes include both radical challengers and hegemony aspirants, such as Iran, seeking to overturn the U.S.-led order, and staunch defenders like Israel, intent on preserving it, as well as weak and fragmented states such as Lebanon, Libya or Sudan. Despite their varied agendas and national capabilities, these states lack the capacity to decisively shape Sino–Middle Eastern futures.
In contrast, consequential swing states – such as Saudi Arabia and Turkiye – possess the capabilities and strategic flexibility to matter. By hedging between Washington and Beijing, they retain the power to tip the regional balance. We maintain that it is these middle powers, rather than either the radical outliers in ideological terms or weak polities in the economic sense, which will determine how the regional order evolves amid great-power rivalry. Understanding the thinking of their elites will help clarify possible futures, including whether they want or expect a Chinese role in the regional security architecture.
Assess whether or not China will eclipse the long-term trajectory of U.S. influence and leadership in the Middle East.
We conclude by asserting that China will not replace the U.S. in the Middle East under current conditions. Although the notions of an impending “Pax Sinica” or “great power rivalry” cyclically appear in some policy circles, our book demonstrates that Beijing lacks the appetite to replace Washington and does not see the Middle East as a space of vital contestation necessitating sustained investment of resources. Similarly, regional elites neither expect nor want such a shift either: many actively welcome a sustained American presence, given the United States’ decades-long political and security presence there, though they might at times utilize the “China card” to extract concessions from the U.S. when needed.
Our expectation for the coming late 2020s and even early 2030s is that while China will likely continue to expand its influence in the Middle East in various ways (though there are ceilings of development we discuss in the conclusion), it will not displace U.S. pre-eminence there in the foreseeable future. The status quo of great power relationalities to the region is acceptable to Chinese and local elites. If for whatever reason the U.S. does recede, however, whether to realize the “pivot” [to the Asia-Pacific] or because of the unsustainability of its imperial commitments, we anticipate that the emergent vacuum is unlikely to be filled by China, and more so by local actors, and especially the middle powers, including erstwhile U.S. partners like Saudi Arabia that see themselves at the center of a new regional order.