China and the Middle East: Israel is no longer important enough for China. The Baltic Sea pipeline was probably damaged by an anchor of a Chinese container ship

Political observers around the world can certainly agree with Chinese Middle East envoy Zhai Jun’s assessment of the Gaza war: there is a risk of a large-scale land conflict and an expansion of the armed conflict along the adjacent borders, it was said he was quoted by state media on Monday. . Nor will he provoke a fundamental contradiction by saying that China is willing to do “whatever it takes” to promote dialogue, reach a ceasefire and restore peace, and promote the two-state solution and a just and lasting solution to the support conflict. Zhai presents China as a regional peacemaker.

The question, however, is how authentic Zhai can be. Its top boss, Chinese President Xi Jinping, does not speak about Hamas terror, let alone publicly condemn it. The Chinese diplomats also do not say explicitly what really happened in southern Israel on October 7. Your comments usually go in a different direction. A week after the attacks, China’s foreign minister told his Saudi counterpart Bin-Faisal that “Israel’s actions” went beyond the “framework of self-defense.” Israelis were deeply offended by China’s unclear positioning, as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government had recently attempted to maintain good political and economic contacts with the People’s Republic.

The combined trade volume increased to more than $22 billion in 2022. Chinese companies have also been able to participate in infrastructure projects such as the construction of a tram in Tel Aviv, there are collaborations with Israeli high-tech companies and a state-owned company from Shanghai operates a modern container terminal in Haifa Bay. It is close to the important port of Haifa, which is also visited by the American fleet. Right next door is an Israeli naval base that also houses nuclear submarines. The Chinese involvement in Haifa in particular has caused great resentment among Israel’s closest ally, the United States. The cooperation between Israeli software companies and Chinese companies is also being scrutinized by American officials.

China wants to advance a pro-Palestinian position

The US government will no longer have these concerns. By not labeling Hamas’ terror for what it is, Chinese diplomats lose a lot of confidence in Israeli politics. But there are obvious reasons why China is acting this way: it has important economic interests in the entire Middle East, and Israel is ultimately only a small part of that. Saudi Arabia and Iran alone now sell most of their oil reserves to the People’s Republic.

A second important driver is China’s geopolitical interests: to date, the Gulf region has been dominated by the United States. Today, China sees the opportunity to position itself as a counterpoint to the US. The fact that the Chinese Foreign Ministry was successfully involved in mediating between the long-hostile states of Saudi Arabia and Iran is a clear sign of this. China already enjoys good relations with Iran, whose Islamic State doctrine includes the destruction of Israel. Iran, in turn, is Hamas’s main supporter next to Qatar.

And as governments across the Middle East take pro-Palestinian positions, the Chinese leadership is taking a more diffuse position in the Gaza war. They want to continue to maintain good relations with the Arab states and Iran. “From an Arab perspective, the Palestinians are freedom fighters. Hamas is not considered a terrorist group. China is adopting this perspective because it helps consolidate its own position in the Arab and Islamic world,” said China expert Gedaliah Afterman of Reichman University in Herzliya in the Berlin specialist newsletter China.Table.

There are similarities in the handling of the war in Ukraine

This goes so far that in the strictly censored online world within China, the Iranian embassy in Beijing appears on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok. may spread anti-Semitic hate speech and assumed truths about the Gaza war. Chinese censors have also allowed anti-Semitic hate speech to be read on China’s online platforms since October 7, the day of the Hamas attacks. Or that one of China’s leading Middle East experts be allowed to publish his hate speech against Jews, as Chinese researcher Tuvia Gerig documented on X. “One of the clear messages from Beijing is that Israel is not particularly important to China. For China, it appears that the damage to bilateral relations with Israel is merely collateral damage to China’s regional and geopolitical aspirations,” said Gedaliah Afterman.

Now on

Ultimately, the path China takes in the case of the Gaza war is not significantly different from the way it handles Russia’s war against Ukraine. Both Hamas supporter Iran and aggressor Russia can spread their propaganda in China. Western politicians’ hopes that China’s leadership will influence Putin to end his war have not yet been fulfilled.

But China’s interest in a stable Middle East should actually be high, based on energy supplies to China alone. That is, the country could try to take advantage of its good relations in Tehran and put pressure on the leaders of the Islamic Republic to influence the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and Hamas. At least to the point where the Gaza war can be somewhat defused. Whether the Iranian regime is at all interested in this is a completely different question.

This article first appeared on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Click here for the original.