But starting to get wet

Originally published by The Economist, 27 May 2010

 ASKED by a foreign reporter in 2002 what he thought about regime change in Iraq, China’s president at the time, Jiang Zemin, dodged the question, noting that Iraq was relatively far away. He added, with typical profundity, that China thought peace good and terrorism bad.

 Tellingly, official Chinese transcripts of the exchange omit Mr Jiang’s reference to Iraq’s distance from China. Whether it likes it or not, China now has a huge stake in the Middle East. Geography can no longer be used as an excuse for absolving itself of any responsibility in the region.

 One reason for this shift is the rapid growth in China’s demand for imported energy. It now imports about half of the oil it consumes. An estimated 80% of imports arrive via vulnerable sea routes from the Middle East and Africa. The dependence on imported oil is likely to increase. The International Energy Agency forecasts that by 2025 China will overtake America as the world’s largest oil-and-gas importer.

 But China’s interests in the region are not limited to energy. It also does big business there in machinery, cars, steel, railways, mining, construction and banking. The value of China’s trade with the Arab world has tripled since 2004, reaching $107 billion last year.

 China is also active—in energy and other fields—in Iran. This leaves it in a dilemma over multilateral efforts to impose sanctions on Iran because of suspicions about its nuclear programme. Foreign and Chinese analysts agree that China sees no imminent danger in Iran, despite efforts by interlocutors as different as Israel and Saudi Arabia to convince it otherwise. Nor does it believe that sanctions would slow Iranian progress towards a nuclear-weapons capability. Yet China does not want to isolate itself as the only big power opposing international action. By way of compromise, its strategy has been to remain non-committal and do what it can to delay and dilute any sanctions.

 Iran’s nuclear ambitions occupy only one of the distant Middle Eastern hornets’ nests China would prefer to avoid but cannot. Another is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to a Middle Eastern diplomat in Beijing, China would like not to get too involved. Its officials “want to walk between the raindrops and keep the Middle East peace process in a box. But now they must play a more prominent role.”

 Indeed, the issue soured the mood at a ministerial-level China-Arab forum held in Tianjin in northern China. Arab participants were disappointed when China refused to support a declaration naming East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. This prompted a rebuke to China from Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League. “If you protect my interests, I will protect yours. If you take a position that does not…I will take a similar position,” he told Al Jazeera, a television station.

 Until recently China has managed to avoid antagonising the Muslim world. But last July it had an unwelcome taste of the consequences. After deadly ethnic unrest between Turkic, Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in the Xinjiang region of western China, angry crowds held anti-China demonstrations in Istanbul. Senior Turkish officials criticised the Chinese government’s crackdown and even spoke of a possible boycott. Crowds in Tehran, meanwhile, were chanting “Death to China!”

 Yin Gang, a Middle East analyst at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says China’s overarching objective in the region is to maintain friendly ties with its four main groups: Arabs, Turks, Persians and Jews. Distant as it is from the region, China’s growing involvement there will make that laudable goal ever harder to reach.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16231382