Books

The Middle Kingdom in the Middle East

How China interacts with its key oil supplying region is the source of a raft of new studies

China has long relied on the Middle East to secure much of the oil needed to fuel its rapid economic development. Since China became a net importer of oil in 1993, the Middle East has emerged as an increasingly important source of this critical commodity. Despite China’s years-long efforts to ramp up local production and diversify its sources of supply, the PRC’s dependency on the Middle East for crude oil remains. In 2020, China imported crude oil that totalled approximately $176bn. Almost 50% of oil imports came from Middle Eastern countries so it is perhaps worth understanding a little more about SinoMiddle Eastern relations.

The Routledge Handbook on China–Middle East Relations brings together a range of scholars to provide valuable analytical insights into how China’s growing Middle East presence affects intra-regional development, trade, security, and diplomacy. China is clearly the largest extra-regional economic actor in the Middle East. China is also the biggest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the region and the largest trading partner for most Middle Eastern states. Essays cover political and security affairs, as well as the value of Chinese assets combined with a growing Chinese expatriate population in the region. The handbook also looks at the ups and downs of the Middle East’s relationship to the United States, Russia, India, Japan, and the European Union in comparison to China.

Motjaba Mahdavi and Tugrul Keskin’s Rethinking China, the Middle East and Asia in a Multiplex World is more for those who have a deeper interest in AsiaChina-Middle Eastern relations. While the Middle East is the central focus there are also interested and related chapters on China’s complex relations with Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, central and south Asia. Mahdavi is professor of political science at the University of Alberta while Keskin is professor of global economy studies at Shanghai University.

Dawn Murphy’s China’s Rise in the Global South: The Middle East, Africa, and Beijing’s Alternative World Order is a very prescient title that raises many issues about Beijing’s relationship with the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa beyond. Murphy, an associate professor of international security studies at the US Air War College, draws on extensive fieldwork and hundreds of interviews, compares and analyses 30 years of China’s interactions with these regions across a range of functional areas: political, economic, foreign aid, and military. From the now much troubled Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to the founding of new cooperation forums and special envoys, China’s Rise in the Global South offers an in-depth look at China’s foreign policy approach to the countries it considers its partners in SouthSouth cooperation. Of course, the book considers the increasing competition for power between China and the US for influence in the Middle East.

With oil and gas supplies back on the agenda in a big way with the Russia-Ukraine war, China’s relationship with the Middle East, where many, especially perhaps the Europeans, will want to source more oil as sanctions are enforced, the Sino-Middle Eastern relationship has never been more important to understand. ●