China and the Arab world
The land of the Prophet embraces the wisdom of the East
At the invitation of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the first China-Arab States Summit and the first China-Gulf Cooperation Council Summit in Riyadh and paid a state visit to Saudi Arabia from December 7 to 10, 2022.
Ahmed Al-Zahrani, cultural attaché at the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in China, writes that, since establishing diplomatic relations in 1990, the two nations have developed a strategic cooperative relationship based on a foundation of mutual respect and mutual benefit. Leaders and officials of both sides have exchanged many visits during past 30 years. He maintains that since 2016, the relation has become a comprehensive strategic partnership.
Objective economic conditions have favored the Chinese-Saudi partnership and its intensification since 2016. Saudi Arabia provides a steady supply of crude oil for China, and China provides a large market for Saudi crude. At present, China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner, buying a quarter of Saudi Arabian oil exports. Increasingly, they trade in a manner that bypasses the use of the U.S. dollar.
At the same time, international developments have pulled Saudi Arabia toward the diversification of its economy. The world-system is increasingly oriented to developing renewable energy, signaling the eventual demise of economies overly dependent on the exportation of crude oil. Moreover, the Third World plus China are increasingly expanding their political autonomy and their productive and commercial capacities, and they are developing networks of mutually beneficial trade that constitute an alternative to the world-system’s unequal core-peripheral exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials. In addition, the USA is a hegemonic power in decline, and an accommodationist alliance with it no longer has the advantages that it had in the 1950s.
In the Saudi shift to the diversification of its economy, China is well positioned to play a beneficial role. China has the economic capacity and the political will to support the industrialization and diversification of the Saudi economy, and to offer its manufactured products on a basis of equal exchange with the expanding manufactured goods of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification and transformation has been formulated as a comprehensive plan in Saudi Vision 2030. In the current conversation between Saudi Arabia and China, there is stress on the integration of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the Saudi Vision 2030. In accordance with this vision, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud launched in 2021 the National Investment Strategy, which included raising direct foreign investment to 5.7 percent of GDP, and increasing the share of non-oil exports from 16 to 50 percent.
Following talks between the leaders of the two countries, Saudi Arabia and China issued a joint statement that stressed the importance of “setting an example of cooperation, solidarity, and mutual gain for developing countries.” It further declared, “The two sides reaffirmed that they will continue to firmly support each other's core interests, support each other in maintaining their sovereignty and territorial integrity, and exert joint efforts to defend the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states, rules of international law and basic principles of international relations.”
Carrying Forward the Spirit of China-Arab Friendship
Xi Jinping’s keynote address to the China-Arab States Summit, "Carrying Forward the Spirit of China-Arab Friendship and Jointly Building a China-Arab Community with a Shared Future in the New Era," began by referring to the ancient and modern historic ties between China and the Arab world and their recent steps toward cooperation:
“China and Arab states enjoy a long history of friendly exchanges. We have come to know and befriend each other through the ancient Silk Road. We have shared weal and woe in our respective struggles for national liberation. We have conducted win-win cooperation in the tide of economic globalization. And we have upheld fairness and justice in the changing international environment. Together, China and Arab states have nurtured the spirit of friendship featuring ‘solidarity and mutual assistance, equality and mutual benefit, and inclusiveness and mutual learning.’”
Xi declared that in their friendship based in equality and mutual benefit, China and the Arab states have set an example for South-South cooperation.
Xi rejects the notion of a clash of civilizations.
“We appreciate each other's civilizations, and have written a splendid history of mutual learning. We keep drawing wisdom from each other's time-honored civilizations, and jointly promote ‘peace, harmony, integrity, and truth’, the very essence of civilization. We stay true to our principles despite the clamour for ‘clash of civilizations’, advocate together inter-civilizational dialogue, oppose discrimination against particular civilizations, and endeavor to safeguard the diversity of world civilizations.”
China supports the independent development plan of the Arab states in accordance with their national conditions. Both China and the Arab world support the sovereignty of states and the principle of non-interference in the affairs of states. Xi declared:
“China supports Arab states in independently exploring development paths suited to their national conditions and holding their future firmly in their own hands. China is ready to deepen strategic mutual trust with Arab states, and firmly support each other in safeguarding sovereignty, territorial integrity and national dignity. Our two sides should jointly uphold the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, practice true multilateralism, and defend the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.”
Xi proposes continued focus on “economic development” and “win-win cooperation.” China and the Arab states should cooperative in traditional areas, such as trade, energy, and infrastructure development. At the same time, there should be a strengthening of cooperation in green and low-carbon development, health and medical services, investment and finance, aviation, aerospace, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Thus, Xi proposes that China will continue to import large quantities of crude oil and liquid natural gas and cooperate in the development of the refining, storage, and transportation of oil and gas. Both sides will work together on clean and low-carbon technologies in wind and photovoltaic power and on peaceful use of nuclear technology. Xi identified major cooperation initiatives in several areas beyond energy and green innovation, including support for development, food security, public health, inter-civilizational dialogue, youth development, and security.
Twelve Arab states presently have a strategic partnership with China. Twenty have signed documents on Belt and Road cooperation; over 200 Belt and Road projects have been carried out. Seventeen Arab states have expressed support for the Global Development Initiative.
Building on Past Achievements and Creating a Brighter Future
The six states of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. China is a natural partner for the bloc, because of China’s large market and sound industrial system; and GCC has rich energy resources and is now undergoing economic diversification. China currently commits to expand its crude oil and liquefied gas imports and to cooperate in the development of oil and gas industry and clean and low-carbon energy technology. In addition, China welcomes astronauts from the bloc for its space crews and missions, and it advocates increasing language and cultural cooperation.
In Xi Jinping’s address to the first China-Gulf Corporation Council Summit, "Building on Past Achievements and Jointly Creating a Brighter Future of China-GCC Relations", Xi referred to the historic ancient and modern ties between China and the Arab world as well as the recent cooperation in the context of the conflicts and contradictions of the world-system.
“The friendly exchange between China and GCC countries goes back nearly two millennia in history. Throughout those years, the two peoples interacted with each other continuously along the ancient Silk Road inspired by the ‘Eastern wisdom’ of peace, harmony and truth. In 1981, China established contact with the GCC upon its inception. Forty plus years on, the two sides have written together a splendid chapter of solidarity, mutual assistance and win-win cooperation.”
Xi observed that there is a “profound mutual trust,” rooted in the fact that “China and GCC countries have all along supported each other's sovereignty and independence, respected each other's development paths, upheld equality between countries regardless of their size, and stood firm in defending multilateralism.”
And there is a high degree of complementarity. China has a larger consumer market and an advanced industrial system, while the countries of the GCC are rich in energy natural resources and at the same time now have an interest in diversified economic development. The Arab nations want to diversify their economies away from oil, as the world is turning to renewable energies. Xi stated that China will continue to import more crude oil and liquefied natural gas from GCC countries and strengthen cooperation in oil and gas development as well as clean and low-carbon energy technologies.
Xi declared that “we should be partners for greater solidarity. We need to further consolidate political mutual trust and firmly support each other's core interests. We need to jointly uphold the principle of non-interference in internal affairs, practice true multilateralism, and defend the common interests of all developing countries.”
China does not interfere or impose its interests
Several specialists from China and Saudi Arabia have maintained that the new era of relations between China and the Arab world is being driven by the fact that China does not interfere in the internal affairs of nations with which it has relations.
Yahya Mahmoud bin Junaid, chairman of the Center for Research and Intercommunication Knowledge in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, declared that “China does not interfere in the affairs of others and does not impose its values and traditions; therefore, it is welcomed in Arab countries.”
Nadia Helmy, an expert in Chinese political affairs and professor of political science at Beni Suef University in Egypt, asserted that “China has not taken a biased position in the fierce regional competition in the Middle East. On the other hand, its BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) encourages regional countries to establish partnerships with China, and achieve win-win results.”
The Global Times of China writes than regional observers are saying that, in contrast to the forceful spread of Western democracy by the USA, China's global development and security initiatives were viewed by Arabs as "positive contributions to stabilizing and improving the world system."
Abdulaziz O. Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, says that Saudi Arabia will not interfere in the issues between the USA and China, and it will not take the U.S. position with respect to China, because the relationship with China is extremely important and valuable. “In the past, many Middle Eastern countries were seen as proxies of the West,” but now they are trying to develop their own development plans on the basis of their own identities.
Liu Zhongmin, a professor at the Middle East Studies Institute of Shanghai International Studies University, noted that “the Arab states are experiencing great internal changes on a par with the huge changes in regional geopolitics, and China has proven to be an ideal and trustworthy partner when regional countries are seeking growth and development.” Accordingly, “the region is demonstrating increasing strategic autonomy” as the United States economically declines yet maintains a delusion of hegemony, issuing dictates to the Arab world.
Liu Zhongmin further observed that the Western nations have a terrible reputation in the Arab world, as a result of a long history of colonialism. In contrast, China has a long history of cordial interactions with the Arab world, which has included the commercial relations of the ancient Silk Road plus the common struggle against colonialism for national liberation and sovereignty. As Chinese ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chen Weiqing has observed, “Since the 1950s, the then newly established People’s Republic of China firmly supported the Arab peoples in their struggle for national liberation and supported the Arab countries in defending their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
On this foundation, when the Chinese economy opened up after 1978, bilateral collaboration has grown significantly. According to Liu, economic cooperation with China is popular because it comes with no political conditions attacked. China has not exerted pressure on other countries for its own interests.
Liu Xin and Chen Zishuai of Global Times write: “As US and Western development models have been losing appeal in the Middle East, more Arab states are eager to learn from China's path to modernization.” They report that a recent poll shows that over 70% of Arabs support closer China-Arab relations in the future, while one percent think that China will pose a threat.
Even the U.S. mainstream media gets it, but only in part
On December 10, CNN published an article on the summits and Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia. It declared that Chinese President Xi Jinping
“was keen to show his Arab counterparts China’s value as the world’s largest oil consumer, and how it can contribute to the region’s growth, including within fields of energy, security and defense.
“The trip was widely viewed as yet another snub to Washington, which holds grievances toward both states over a number of issues.
“The United States, which has for more than eight decades prized its strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia, today finds its old partner in search of new friends – particularly with China, which the US worries is expanding its sphere of influence around the world.
“While Saudi Arabia was keen to reject notions of polarization or ‘taking sides,’ it also showed that with China it can develop deep partnerships without the criticism or ‘interference’ for which it has long resented its Western counterparts.”
The article noted that the unwritten agreement between Washington and Saudi Arabia has been that the Kingdom provides oil and the USA provides military support and support for the Kingdom with respect to its rivals in the region. But this agreement is no longer in the interests of Riyadh.
These comments are more or less on target. The article, however, noting that China and Saudi Arabia today share commitment to the principle of non-interference in the affairs of states, seems mystified as to its meaning, observing that “not interfering in one another’s internal affairs presumably means not commenting on domestic policy or criticizing human rights records.” Actually, not interfering in the internal affairs of states means not interfering in the internal affairs of states, by paying persons to carry out disruptive activities, by using internet technology to form a mass opposition movement or uprising, by providing economic and political support to opposition figures, by signaling to the military approval for a coup d’état, or by politicizing the issue of human rights to justify interventions in the affairs of sates, all of which have been standard practices of the United States for the last seven decades, in pursuit of its imperialist interests in the world. The alternative international economic order under construction is a post-imperialist world, in which such practices are no longer tolerated.
How can the China-Saudi rapprochement be explained?
The arrangement between the United States and Saudi Arabia during the second half of the twentieth century was mutually beneficial only with respect to the Saudi and U.S. elites. There is a story here of betrayal and corruption. The Saudi royal family and other Arab elites deposited the enormous petro profits in Northern banks. This led to excess liquidity in Northern banks, which was relieved by lending enormous sums of money, without well-conceived development plans and with flexible rates of interest, to Third World states. When the interest rates were raised, the Third World debt crisis was created, which was used by the IMF to impose neoliberal polices on Third World states. In this way, the funds generated by OPEC’s setting a higher price for crude oil—which was advocated by the Non-Aligned Movement, with respect to raw materials in general, as a strategy for promoting Third World development—wound up being used as a weapon to weaken Third World states and deepen the impoverishment of the peoples of the world. This arrangement did not serve the nation and the people of Saudi Arabia or other Arab oil-rich nations, which have had an objective, long-range interest in the diversification of their economies and the socioeconomic development of their nations. Nor did it serve the interests of the people of the United States, who have had a long-term interest in the expansion of the purchasing power of the developing economies, which could have been outlets for stimulating the advancement of the productivity of the U.S. economy. The arrangement was a strategic partnership between the U.S. power elite and an Arab elite oriented to accommodation to the demands of the West.
A unique dimension to Saudi accommodationism was the use of religion against the Third World project of national liberation. In Islam, as in Christianity, there is a widespread purely personal form of practicing the faith, which emphasizes personal discipline with respect to prayer, fasting, marriage and parental obligations, and alms-giving. However, the teachings of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic prophets and theologians also can be interpreted as proclaiming a social struggle between oppressors and oppressed, in which the faithful are called to fidelity to the true and the right in defense of the creation of a just society. In this approach, the struggle for personal discipline is not denied, but it is supplemented by a struggle for social transformation of structures that create exorbitant wealth and power. Islam in the form of social transformation, plus the emergence among the people of the consciousness of national liberation, constituted clear ideological threats to the established order in the 1960s.
Among those schooled in the tradition of Islam as personal piety was Crown Prince Faysal of Saudi Arabia, who created the World Muslim League in 1962. The League sought to disrupt the growth of Third World nationalism, mostly clearly represented in the Arab world by Nasser in Egypt. The League was opposed to Nasserism’s acceptance of the concept of the modern nation-state, with a secular sense of community, as well as Nasserism’s rejection of social hierarchy and domination by certain classes and clans. As expressed by Vijay Prashad, whereas “Nasserism and Communism promised equality, the Saudis proffered a celestial equality” that “accepted the hierarchy of the world.” Ultimately, the Third World project of national liberation, blocked on all fronts by the Western powers and lacking sufficient economic resources, failed to transform neocolonial economic structures, and this led to a revival of Islam as personal piety during the 1970s and 1980s.
Neither Islam as personal piety nor Islam as social transformation could justify the new form of terrorism that arrived after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war. The new form of terrorism consisted of the indiscriminate killing of civilians who did not have any direct connection to oppressive or unjust acts committed against the people. Belief in this new form of terrorism required the Islamic believer to think that entire categories of people are unredeemable in the eyes of God, and that some believers are authorized to be an instrument of God’s punishment. Such a view is extreme, and very few people are going to normally arrive to such a conclusion, except in conditions of extreme stress and desperation. To be sure, from the vantage point of both Islam as personal piety and Islam as social transformation, modern Western societies can be seen as lost, due to their secularism, materialism, and indifference to the suffering of the poor. But such a conviction is different from concluding that entire sectors of a population, regardless of their individual behavior, should be condemned as unrepentant sinners for their acquiescence to unjust social structures; and that believers are authorized to slay them in God’s name.
Neither religion as personal piety nor religion as social transformation, therefore, permits the new form of terrorism. And in the same vein, all of the major actors in the construction of a New International Economic Order have repeatedly condemned terrorism in all its forms, even as they also condemn colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism. They have declared the fundamental injustice of the established neocolonial world-system, and they in determined circumstances have supported guerrilla struggles against colonialism, such as in Vietnam, Algeria, and Angola. But they have not sanctioned the indiscriminate killing of civilians as a legitimate or morally acceptable strategy.
However, there emerged an indirect connection of Saudi Arabia to the new form of terrorism. The World Muslim League, founded as noted by Saudi Arabia, funded guerrilla insurgencies against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as did the CIA. In the conditions of guerrilla armed struggle in Afghanistan, the new form of terrorism took root as a strategy on an unprecedented scale, thus giving rise by the 1990s and 2000s to international terrorism as a major security concern. Some nations that are actively involved in the construction of a New International Economic Order, such as China, Russia, Türkiye, and Iran, find that terrorism in their territories is a significant problem, and they are struggling against this threat to the security of their citizens.
Nevertheless, the connection of Saudi Arabia to the emergence of the new form of terrorism was indirect and unintentional. Its goal was to support a personal form of religion among the people, in order to undermine the appeal of the national liberation movement. Their accommodationist intention was not laudable, but it was not the barbaric sanctioning of the murder of civilians.
Ideological perspectives have evolved during the last five decades. In the 1970s, when the World Muslim League supported Afghani guerrillas against the Soviet Union, there was a widespread view in religious worlds that communism was antagonistic to religion. Today, however, Third World socialist and national liberation movements have evolved to include religious leaders and organizations. There is a growing tendency toward alliance and common ideological ground between, on the one hand, Third World socialist and progressive political forces, and on the other hand, Christian and Islamic organizations and leaders. They find philosophical common ground against neoliberal capitalism, new forms of imperialism, and the cynical post-modern and post-truth epistemological assumptions of a neocolonial world-system in decadence. They believe that the truth can be known and that the right can be defended by committed citizens acting together.
The tendency of progressive movements to approach the religious includes both the personal piety and the social transformation approaches to religion. From the vantage point of the forces for structural change, religion as social transformation is better than religion as personal piety, inasmuch as religion as social transformation calls the people to a social construction and to personal participation in the development of a more just society. And it promises that the struggle for social justice ultimately will prevail. But religion as personal piety does no damage. Indeed, in exhorting discipline at a personal level, it calls for a quality needed in the social transformation movements.
This ideological evolution with respect to socialism and religion is intertwined with changing conditions in the political-economic order. The Western powers are in decline, and they are no longer reliable allies for accommodationist states. At the same time, the orientation of the Western states to renewable energy signals the eventual demise of the Arab accommodationist strategy based on the sale of crude oil. In these conditions, oil-rich nations are pulled to an alternative approach, involving using petro income to diversify the economy, which would have been initiated decades ago, if the interests of the people had prevailed in the national political will. In this recent development plan based on economic diversification, now evident to all and not merely politically powerless visionaries, the logical road is partnership with China and participation in the alternative world order under construction, a process led by China and progressive and socialist governments of the Third World.
These ideological and political-economic dynamics, evolving during the last five decades, explain the Saudi turn away from accommodationist alliance with the United States and toward partnership with China and toward cooperation with other Arab and Gulf states and China in the development of a more just, equal, and sustainable world-system. And they explain why China and all the forces constructing a more just international economic order welcome and embrace this ideological and political reset in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world.
Conclusion
In today’s commentary, we see mutually beneficial cooperation surging in recent years with respect to China and the Arab world. In recent commentaries, I have addressed this theme of the emergence of an alternative world-order based on cooperation and mutually beneficial trade. See “Türkiye looks toward a new world order: An alternative, more just, pluripolar world-system under construction,” December 6, 2022; and “The Construction of a Pluripolar World: The neocolonized peoples seek cooperation and mutually beneficial trade,” December 9, 2022).
There is, in my view, clear evidence that the nations of the world are constructing an alternative, more just world-system. The United States does not possess the economic capacity to stop the emerging alternative reality, as a result of the erosion of its productivity and commerce. The USA does, however, possess enormous military capacity, and it possesses advanced techniques in ideological manipulation. As a result, the alternative world under construction faces the major challenge of the hegemonic power in decline unleashing more and more violence and fomenting chaos and division.
For this reason, the comportment of the people of the United States is of great importance. This people, who defeated fascism during World War II (with considerable help from the Soviet Union), who brought the imperialist war in Vietnam to an end, who checked imperialist aggression in Central America in the 1980s, who transformed entrenched racist practices (contrary to the erroneous claims of certain theories now in vogue), and who authorized their government to renegotiate treaties with indigenous nations (overlooked by the same theories now in vogue), now must awaken to stop the new forms of imperialist aggression that threaten all of humanity, and to participate in the construction of a more just international economic order.
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