The volume under review is a welcome contribution to the growing body of research on China's presence in the Middle East, and a very important one at that. Edited by James Reardon-Anderson, the volume is divided into three parts, each offering a different perspective on how the many ethnic, religious and political fault-lines crisscrossing the region impact on Chinese interests. Part one comprises three chapters on the bigger picture with Sino-American ties at the backstage. Part two offers four thematic case studies ranging from China's arms trade through to China's bilateral relations with Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Part three is a dedicated treatment of the challenges confronting the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative. Finally, in part four, two studies examine how China's own Muslim population serve as bridgehead, but also complicate, China's engagement with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
In the first chapter, Andrew Scobell suggests China's presence in the Middle East is fast growing, yet its strategic interaction remains minimalist due in part to deep-seated “timidity” about formal alliances with new and possibly unpredictable stakeholders (p. 15). Whilst Chinese emissaries have been appointed to that end, and even though dependence on oil imports from the Gulf is rising, Beijing's efforts to troubleshoot the Israeli–Palestinian morass have for example remained “bland” (pp. 18, 30). During the Cold War, Beijing had viewed the region as a landmine simultaneously sapping US and USSR power, and usually to its advantage. However, Beijing now realizes regional conflagration would exact higher energy costs domestically, and therefore seeks new ways to hedge its bets. Scobell seems to conclude that China might divert investment to Central Asia in the near future as a result.
In the following chapter, Jon Alterman underscores Chinese preference for strictly state-to-state engagement as opposed to American tendency to reach beyond government when dealing with foreign players. The fact that the US funds the consolidation of civil society worldwide to the tune of US$3.2 billion annually often draws fire from incumbent Arab leaders, and many in the region blame Hosni Mubarak's downfall precisely thereon (pp. 45–46). If the White House inexorably takes sides, then China's appeal is rooted in asserting what it is not, rather than in offering alternative security architecture. Like Scobell, Alterman seems to suggest post-Soviet Central Asia, as well as possibly Pakistan, afford a smoother avenue for Chinese geo-strategic ambition than the Middle East, in whose complexities the US has been involved since the 1920s (p. 49).
In turn, Mehran Kamrava suggests that the Beijing vision does look “seductive” to Middle Eastern governments because of its developmental economic credentials. However, it is not clear whether Chinese economic-reform formulae can work in a starkly different regional setting. To some extent, the infitah reforms in the Arab world during the 1970s had in fact pre-saged China's insofar as the piecemeal sale of state assets was concerned (p. 73). The main difference between the East Asian and Arab developmental setting was the fact that Arab governments immediately created wide clientelist networks in society to ensure their survival, whilst the Chinese Communist Party had consolidated itself before embarking on its developmental path. Kamrava rightly points out that conservatives in Iran admire China because they constitute an economic interest group within the state, but that the middle class there is more Europhile.
Degang Sun explains in his chapter that a discussion is currently underway among Beijing strategists with regard to future off-shore military deployment. Under President Xi, China opened its first off-shore naval base in Djibouti, and hawks might wish to see many more across the Indo-Pacific. Here, Chinese concerns seem to be primarily driven not by the US but by more recent Japanese and Indian strategic convergence. The new base in Djibouti has meant in effect a Chinese compromising of its own irenic rhetoric, one that is habitually couched in Zheng He's 15th-century exploits (p. 90). On the other hand, the evacuation of Chinese nationals from Libya and Yemen demonstrated the need for naval agility.
As mentioned, the rest of the book is made up of micro-level case studies beginning with Altay Atli's treatment of Sino-Turkish relations. Whilst much mutual understanding has been achieved at governmental level since the Cold War, the three main problems dogging an improvement of relations between Ankara and Beijing are – according to Atli – trade imbalances, the plight of Uyghurs, and Bashar al-Assad. For example, whereas most of the imported marble on Chinese building sites is from Turkey, surprisingly, the worldwide Chinese tourist boom has so far largely skipped Turkey's seaside resorts. Turkish public opinion of Beijing has been mostly negative since the 2009 Urumqi riots, and key joint infrastructural and military projects have stalled.
John Garver persuasively argues that China's role in negotiating the Vienna Accords with Tehran was part of Xi Jinping's more ambitious foreign-policy agenda, as well as deriving from recognition of China's vulnerabilities in the era of net oil imports. Beijing tried to chime in with the overall policy objectives of the Obama administration. But the limitations of the volume forcefully come across here in that so much has already changed under Donald Trump.
Next, Joseph Sassoon shows how intricately enmeshed Chinese and American interests have become in post-Saddam Iraq. China did not obstruct the 2003 US-led invasion, and was rewarded by US commitment to uphold Beijing's pre-existing oil concessions. Nevertheless, China baulked at assisting the US in stamping out ISIL forces from their Iraqi strongholds.
Inevitably, the OBOR segment is affected by President Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which had not been on the cards when the volume went to print. Notwithstanding, Stephen Blank's and Andrew Small's respective chapters do a good job of mapping out the logic underpinning OBOR. Finally the two chapters penned by Muhammed al-Sudairi and James Dorsey turn readers’ attention to the interplay between foreign policy and domestic sensibilities insofar as the Hui and Uyghur communities in China are concerned.
