The Day After: America, China and a Changed Middle East | China Considered | Hoover Institution

[MUSIC] Welcome to China Consider, a podcast that brings fresh insight and informed discussion to the most consequential issues of our time. How China is changing and changing the world. Unwiz economy, Hargob Senior Fellow and co-director of the program on the US China and the world at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Today, we're very fortunate to have with us Dr. Jonathan Fulton. Dr. Fulton is an expert on China in the Middle East. He's a political scientist at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, host of the China Mina podcast and the author and editor of several books on China's role in the Middle East. He joins me right now from Abu Dhabi, where he's lived for nearly two decades. Jonathan, it's great to have you with us. Thanks, one's great to be here. So we'll come to China in the Middle East in a minute, but I can't help but start with front page news here, which is that there's an agreement between the United States and Iran to cease hostilities and to open the state of Hormuz. What do you make of this agreement? Do you think it's durable and how's it being viewed, you know, more broadly in the region? Well, I think there's a huge sigh of relief. You know, there's been quite a bit of anxiety. It's been, it's been wreaking havoc on local economies. I think there's cautious optimism, but emphasis on the cautious bit, you know, you could see a lot of the headlines were kind of a little skeptical. It seems that this hinge is also on Israel Lebanon holding study, which of course is the crapshoot. So at the moment, I think everybody's just breathing a sigh of relief. You know, I think one thing that struck me as somebody who's been in the region for about 20 years is just that when you see what the ceasefire looks like right now, that the straight is open again and the blockade is over. And my first thought was, well, that's exactly what we had on February 27th. So it seems like a terrible detour that we've gone through to get to where we were. But, you know, that's the cynical political scientist in me. I think just as somebody who lives here, I think everybody is pretty happy that we might see some kind of new normal to work with. Yeah, I think, you know, from the perspective of the Trump administration, of course, you know, they'll argue that the United States has inflicted serious damage on Iranian military capabilities. That's been sort of, that's what I believe they're going to fall back on to counter the argument that you just made, which is exactly what I thought, what I saw. Like, are we just back to where we were and we've just spent the past several months, you know, just in sort of in this period of destruction for no really good reason. But, but you think that there's hope then a little bit of cautious optimism. Is that fair? Well, the cautious optimism is that that hostilities will will will tamp down and things will will be a little more stable here. But I think most people who actually are in the region would respond to the degrade degradation of the Iranian capabilities and think that's not all that's been degraded, you know, along with the the American bases and the idea of deterrence and the the you know, just the small medium enterprises have taken such a beating to real-state markets. A lot of wealth has been destroyed by this. So it does feel like a wasted several months of, you know, what was this all about. Okay, we'll come back to Iran and talk about this. But I want to zoom out for the moment and for people watching this who don't necessarily follow the region that closely, how would you characterize China's ambitions in the Middle East, you know, are they strategic, are they economic, are they diplomatic, all of the above and have you witnessed, you know, as I mentioned in the introduction, you know, been in the region for nearly two decades, have you seen a sort of dramatic evolution in China's role in the region? Absolutely. So I got here in 2006 and prior to that, I was in Asia for about a decade. And I thought I was coming to the Gulf and I was just learning about the Middle East. I didn't anticipate, you know, a China watching phase in my career. But you could see already, you know, this was during the Iraq war in China's, China was playing a more activist role. There'd been a couple of high profile visits with the Saudis. Just the idea that, you know, when oil hits $140 a barrel in China's and major oil in order, they need to have a bigger presence in the region. So they started to get more activists around the first decade. And then of course, when Xi Jinping came and they released the Belt and Road Initiative and you could see just a tremendous surge in what China was doing in this part of the world. In terms of how would I characterize it, I mean, I would start by saying it's different depending on where you are. Like here in the Gulf, China's footprint is pretty broad and relatively deep. If you go to the Levant, it's very modest. China doesn't do a lot. There, I think, the security prices there make it very, make it an interesting option for Chinese S.O.E.s to operate in. And then in North Africa, you've just seen a lot happening in that. I think it's something worth tracking. But across all three subregions, it's primarily an economic presence. China comes here to make money, China comes here to get energy. Everything else is really kind of second level. And that the economic stuff has been really interesting to watch. I would say also like in 2013, sorry, 2014, there's a forum, the China Arab States Cooperation Forum. It's kind of like full cat for Africa. In every two years, they'd have these ministerial meetings. In 2014, it was hosted in Beijing and Xi Jinping gave the opening welcoming remarks. And he introduced this thing called the OnePlus 2+3 Cooperation Framework. And what it was was how does China want to engage with Arab countries for the next, you know, whatever, 10, 20, 30 years. And if you look at it, each number, of course, is Chinese initiatives. Usually are each number represents a bucket of sectors or priorities. One was hydrocarbons, two was trade investment, infrastructure construction, three was nuclear energy, renewable energy, space satellites. Nothing about politics, nothing about security, nothing about military cooperation. It's all about economics and development. And they've stuck to that really carefully over the past decade and 12 years. Certain areas like energy, infrastructure, trade have really shot through the roof. Renewable energy is really expanded. Space satellite nuclear has kind of gone nowhere, but they really, really increase the economic footprint in the region. So I mean, that's very interesting. One of the things we've seen China sort of expand into is policing, right, and training of police and sort of going alongside with their whole smart city initiatives. So are you seeing that in the Middle East as well? And are you seeing sort of a big push in the digital space in addition to the trade and the energy and, you know, clean tech? What about the digital infrastructure and the sort of policing, which kind of bleeds then into, I think, the security space? So it's interesting. And I'm glad you've brought that up from the start because I think most people when they talk security cooperation, it's usually like, mil to mill and arm sales and joint, you know, operations. And that's modest too, like nothing much happens in that space. But on the stuff that was highlighted in the Global Security Initiative, which is the surveillance and the policing and the technological side, very much so. And it's interesting because this region, it's not like there's a lot of democracies that they have to navigate. You've got a lot of authoritarian governments that are very comfortable, you know, with the normative elements of this stuff, you know, that you can use tech to surveil your citizens and find out if anybody's joining any kind of extremist organization or any kind of politicized religious groups or what they're saying on their chat groups. You know, we'd have serious reservations about that in Western countries here. Governments tend to see that as a plus. So China's made pretty good inroads into a lot of that stuff, but they also have trained it really interestingly. You know, if you look at, you know, these coastal cities in China, where the smart city, it's presented as, you know, how can we help people live better lives? You know, how can we, you know, provide better emergency services and, and, you know, it's, it's always presented as a positive. If you look in contested, like in Xinjiang or Tibet, it's seen in a very different way. How can we track people and watch them and, you know, oppress them better? And you see both sides of that here. So if they come to do by, they're like, how can we help you achieve your development agendas with smart cities and digital technology that's going to help you diversify your economy and modernize to a non-hydroccarbon-based economy, or they can go to Saudi and say, how can we help you move these huge groups of hedge pilgrims that come every year, which, you know, is a real security issue, not security in terms of traditional, you know, writing or whatever, but we've got a lot of elderly people that we have to provide emergency services for when you've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of people on the streets. How can you use smart city tech to help move these people more efficiently? So they can come to this part of the world and they can pitch it either way. And in both cases, you find a very receptive audience. Yeah, so I know it's also an area where the US has, you know, tried various points in time, beginning with the first Trump administration, then through the Biden administration, to sort of offer an alternative, right? Perhaps not hugely successfully, but are you seeing that kind of competition play out again in this digital space? So what used to be here in the UAE where I live, There was always a lot of work to do. this question, you know, like Huawei had made pretty significant enroads into, you know, their 5G networks and their AI networks. And there was a sense that maybe the Emirates were playing both sides off each other. And then you're. I'm sure, I'm sure because I talk to state a lot and back in those days and I think it was a very serious problem or concern rather. But the Emirates made a pretty public and pretty clear bat when they when they signed this deal with Microsoft and G42, which is their their national champion AI company. And what you see is any kind of AI cooperation that links into anything that could be strategic or that links into security networks or whatever, they are a whole other than the Pope. And there is no space for Chinese companies in these types of AI cooperation. If you go down the road to Dubai, you'll see a different story where there's a lot of commercial AI, you know, that's being integrated into, you know, their digital hummers and their EVs and their robotaxies and smart city stuff. But I guess the idea here is that it can be siloed off into, you know, the critical and the commercial. And that's something you're seeing more and more of, they can see, you know, China's kind of best in class in a lot of digital payments and a lot of digital economy. And so they're pretty happy to work with China on these things. But at the same time, they seem to really prize their relationship with, you know, their traditional long-term partners as well. So it's they're trying to strike a balance between what's necessary and what what's a must have and what's the nice to have. And do you think that is the sort of traditional relationship with the United States? Is it a 90% security relationship and an energy relationship or sort of how deeply fixed is that relationship? And, you know, just to go back to, you know, the start of our conversation, do you think that the war with the rawn has in any way shifted sort of the thinking in the region about the relative weight of China, the United States and how close, you know, countries would like to be to one or the other. So the narrative, the dominant narrative has always been the US does security in China does the economy. And I get why people say that because you know, if you just look at the rawn numbers, China's the number one to five top trading partner for every country in the Arab world. And this, you know, I would kind of push back about this a lot. I mean, that's mostly trading goods. That's very imbalanced. It almost always favors China heavily in non-oil exporters. You see a very imbalanced relationship where China kind of hurts local markets, local producers. But at the same time, a trading partner that big, you can't really alienate. So, you know, it is an important economic partner and they do a lot of construction and contracting and development and all this stuff. But the US is a major investor in a lot of countries and there are, it's a much broader, much deeper. The US relationship tends to be comprehensive, you know, like when Xi Jinping, he went to Riyadh in December 22 and there's a state visit and you could see the bullet points of the outcomes and everybody kind of lost their minds and went, oh my god, China's like such a big actor with the Saudis on these things. And remember saying like that's like a list of half a dozen things if you were to kind of list what the Saudis do with the US, you know, in the economic and the education and the training and the security and the diplomatic, like it's a phone walk, right? So, you know, China gets kind of the headlines. It's flashy and sexy. It seems disruptive, but it's really much shallower. The US, I think if you look at their their relationships in the GCC countries, they all have defense or defense cooperation agreements or facility access agreements, which are the pillars of their defense informed policies. You see the same thing with Egypt, you see with Israel, of course, in Jordan. China just doesn't do that, right? China says we can do a lot with you in the economic space and we can build on that to maybe cooperate on other issues where we both have shared interests. But there's a pretty low ceiling on what China is willing to do in this part of the world. It's nothing comparable to what the US does. And I think the war has at a, you know, the so-called Arab street, like amongst publics, there's a lot of frustration and concern. Like I said, local economies have really suffered. If you listen to the elites, and I know that's always an issue, you know, what government saying what people say are tend to be, you know, very different things. But most governments have really said, we're doubling down on the US relationship, not necessarily out of comfort with the way this is played out. But with the realization that no other great power has been willing or able to come into this war, into this region and provide security in the same way, who has some munitions stockpiles, who has the training, who has the personnel. The Europeans have been somewhat helpful, but on a smaller scale. The Koreans have been kind of helpful for the UAE, but on a small scale, Ukraine, which has been really interesting. I sent a lot of drones and drone technicians to help, but no other power can do what the US does. And China has made it very clear they don't see themselves as that kind of relationship. So, you know, maybe on one level, people are a little hesitant about, you know, the depths of it, but I think at the end of the day, the government seemed to be pretty comfortable with being more deeply integrated into an American architecture. So, do you think that's, you know, one of China's strengths, at least perhaps before the war, appeared to be that it manages to be friends at some level with everyone, right? It never seems to choose sides, you know, among the countries. And so, you know, it's supportive of Iran, but it's also supportive of the Gulf countries. And but perhaps by not choosing a side, then China is facing some sort of consequence. Because of that, do you think that's part of the mentality or I think they absolutely choose a side. They just don't go around blabbing about it. You know, like, so look at the Gulf. I mean, of course, the China-Ron relationship is the one that everybody looks at because it seems very consequential and it looks disruptive and revisionist. And we all think about the crinks and what this means for regional global order. Maybe they may be defined crinks for people who don't know what that means. Yeah. Everybody listening to your podcast knows what this is, but I'm hearing a lot of podcasts. So the China-Russia-Iran North Korea, you know, grouping that's really kind of become much more interesting since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But at the same time, like, if you look at what China does with the GCC and it totally flies under the radar relative to what China does with Iran, it's much deeper, broader, you know, I was looking at the numbers recently. There's no accurate list of populations in this part of the world because, you know, people come and go pretty regularly. There's about between 500,000 Chinese citizens living in the GCC. When China had to evacuate all of its citizens from Iran during the 12-day war, they said it was between two and 3,000. Yeah. They have done hundreds of billions of dollars of contracting in the GCC since, you know, the past 20 years. They've done about 20 billion with Iran. Like, they've absolutely made it clear which side they prefer, but they're never going to flat-out say, you know, we prefer this country over that country because they're at that kind of second-tier power privilege. You know, nobody expects them to pick a side in these regional rivalries. Everybody would like it if China would tip the scales on one side or the other, but nobody expects it the way they expect the US to do it or the Brits to do it or whoever. China's a relic of newcomer to this part of the world and there's not really a deep history of playing a major diplomatic role in regional issues. And that's great for China. They're happy to keep doing it as long as they can. But I think if you look at the run numbers, absolutely. They have preferences. They say, we're friends with the Israelis and the Palestinians. Well, yeah, sure they are. They are rhetorical friends with the Palestinians and they do tremendous volumes of trade with the Israelis and they're not comparable. Nonetheless, I mean, they did not have not stood with the Israelis, for example, in UN Security Council votes. And I think, you know, it's interesting. You and I were at a meeting together in Europe not that long ago. And one of the things that we talked a little bit about was China's initial, it seemed initial interest in establishing a base in the UAE. I think you think that's it's going nowhere. It's sort of a it's dead in the water. But maybe could you talk a little bit about, you know, the reality of that was was there a push by the Chinese because that would sort of mean that China was moving into another space. And then perhaps you could say a little bit about China's efforts in the sort of Saudi Iran deal, which got a lot of attention a few years ago. Yeah, those are two really cool things to talk about. The again, with these, the China Arab States cooperation forum in 2018, Wang Yi rolled out one of these ridiculously named initiatives, the Industrial Park for connectivity to to wing to wheel approach. And it doesn't really fit in the headlines, so nobody really knew what to make of it. But what they were saying, you could see in the years leading up to this that there were certain coastal locations from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea to the Eastern Med, where China had been building a pretty big commercial presence. And in this, this, who wings to wheels approach, they kind of linked them together. So you can see that there is a port here in Abu Dhabi, called Khalifa Port, where they'd set up a Costco had set up port operations, and also an industrial park. It's called the Jiangsu overseas investment park, I think. They had done something in Oman along the Arabian Sea coastline in this fishing village called Dukum, where similar to Chinese industrial park in a port, the Basin Jabudi in industrial park in Saudi, just north of Yemeni border, a lot in Su'az, in Egypt, and then in the high-fin Israel. And it was interesting, 'cause looking at these projects, they all seem disconnected. But if you look at Zoom out on the map, you can see these kind of supply chains and business clusters that get you from the Gulf to the Med. It was pretty interesting. And in 21 or 22, there's a story, I think the Wall Street Journal, that this facility in Abu Dhabi, the Khalifa port, that the Chinese have been building some kind of military facility here. And the Emirates resolutely denied that there was any military application to it. There's speculation, it might be a listening post or something. I'm on this inclined to believe the Emirates because it would have been such a clear break with their US relationship. It would have represented a very disruptive moment in that bilateral. And like I said a few minutes ago, it's the central pillar of the defense and security policy. Whatever China was building there, and there's still a lot of speculation of what that might have been, it's been pretty clear that that stopped. And I think one reason why I was skeptical of this facility in the first place was China doesn't have any connective tissue. I mean, so there's the base in Djibouti, which I think we all know is kind of overstated and it's military utility. But from the Gulf to Hainan Island, there's nothing except commercial ports. They don't have bases, right? So if they were to put a facility in the Gulf and kind of the heart of Pax Americana, they would be pretty exposed, right? They'd be surrounded by American facilities, 35,000 American troops and go what end? 'Cause they already get everything they need under or they did prior to this war under the American security umbrella, which has always provided kind of a low cost entry into a security risky environment, not just for China, but for US allies and partners like India, Japan, and Korea. Everybody can come into the Gulf under this US architecture and do business and not worry about your expats citizens being at risk. And China's enjoyed that opportunity as well. So I think the idea that they would disrupt that by putting a base in Abu Dhabi and that Abu Dhabi would allow it seemed kind of a bridge too far for me. The point about the Saudi Iran, rapprochement, that was really interesting 'cause that happened during this six month period. I'd mentioned a few minutes ago that Xi Jinping visited Riyadh in '22. The contrast between his visit to Saudi in December of that year and Joe Biden's visit to Saudi in July of that year was pretty substantial. And a lot of folks looked at it and thought, okay, Joe Biden gets a fist bump and Xi Jinping gets a purple carpet on the tarmac and tens of billions of dollars in MOUs and deals and three summits and something like a dozen heads of state. And then shortly after Iran's since the cease president Raiisi visited Beijing, there was the announcement that Iran was joining SEO, the Shannan cooperation organization as a full member that bricks was coming to the Middle East, that President Mahmoud Abbas from Palestine visited Beijing and the foreign minister announced that they're inviting Netanyahu so they could solve Israel, Palestine. And then right in the middle of all this, you had this announcement, this dramatic announcement that he said been made between the Saudis and the Iranians and that China had brokered in Beijing. And I always refer to this period as I did at the meeting, we attended this peak China-Mina height. You can open a newspaper without seeing a headline like as the US leaves a vacuum, China fills it or some kind of interesting headline like this. That deal between the Saudis and the Iranians had been baked almost a completion by local actors, the Amanis and the Iraqis were the primary chefs who've been putting it together. And the Saudis had been working closely with them to try to get it completed. And there was a point that December where they realized they needed kind of a great power guarantee or a stamp of approval. And obviously America couldn't provide that because they have no diplomatic relations with Iran and Russia was so, this was late 22 of the war in Ukraine had been a little preoccupied. India I suppose has good relations with both, but isn't really seen as a very significant diplomatic actor or in this part of the world, so that leaves China. And it was like a gift just fell from the sky and landed in Xi Jinping's lap. But what did they do to get a pass the finish line? I think it was just the convening power to say, like you need a country like China to do this, we're happy to do it. Of course, this is right after the global security initiative was announced. So this former foreign minister and current men of mystery, Chinggong in his speech said, this is the GSI in practice. You can see to the world we've done something nobody else could do and we can do this for you too, right? But that hype passed pretty quickly, right? You know, I think all sides were invested. I mean, for the Saudis, their primary motivation was they're trying to get foreign investment to come into Saudi and you can't do that while you've got the Houthis launching missiles that they get from the Iranians. You can't get foreign companies to set up shop in Saudi if it's a security nightmare. So they were deeply invested in getting this done. The Iranians needed some stability because they had all these terrible riots after that or young women was killed by the Iranian police. You know, the local actors were much more interested in getting this done and China just gave them a road path to it. That hype period, I think, you know, you can bookmark it with she arriving in Riyadh in December of '22 and then the Hamas attack on Israel 11 months later in October of '23 because China at that point, you could see a lot of their initiatives and peace through development narratives just didn't really hold under that kind of duress. And local actors didn't really see China as being willing or able to play a meaningful role in the most pressing regional issues. - Yeah, I mean, I think you're, you know, that is the story that was ultimately told here as well that China kind of came in and, you know, stamped the document, right? But didn't do that much really to get that document put together. Nonetheless, it capitalized on that in a way that was pretty extraordinary. And as you point out, the whole point of the Global Security Initiative, you know, a large part of which says, you know, we don't need to, you know, go to war to solve problems. We don't need alliances to solve problems. We can do this all through negotiation and discussion and peaceful means. It did seem to represent just the perfect example of the China model for global security. But I think in the past four years, right? One could argue, well, what have you done lately? And certainly, I think in the end, China has not played a major role, but correct me if I'm wrong, in the sort of, the resolution of the, you know, war in Iran. And so I think that, you know, there have been some, I think ambition on the part of President Trump to draw the Chinese in in some more significant way, but it's not my sense that that actually happened. I don't know what, again, your perspective is sitting there, whether China is viewed as having played, you know, a role, an important role in bringing this agreement to fruition. - So you'll see local actors again, offering China some flowers on this, you know, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, who's the presumptive future president of the UAE. Made his first state visit to China April. And, you know, this was meant to be a chance for a guy whose office is primarily interested in development and trade to go to China and talk about economic stuff. And this had been on the books for six months before the visit. It ended up being, you know, a pretty significant diplomatic component to it. And that's when she announced his latest four point plan for Middle East peace or five points. I can't keep some straight anymore, but he did announce a numbered point plan of how to address this crisis. And, you know, the Emirates have said that during that meeting, they were able to send messages to the Iranians via the Chinese about how to stabilize the region during this crisis. What extent that's true or what role trying to play other than delivering a message, it's hard to say. My sense is it wasn't really that significant. There is also the Pakistan, foreign minister visited Longi in March and they also released a five-point plan. There was talk that the Chinese and Pakistanis were really easing quite a bit during the meeting in Islamabad. But I don't get the sense that China was or has been really since October 7th a very meaningful diplomatic player in the region. In the Israel side of things, Israel, Hamas, Israel, Haspala, Israel, Iran, Israel has a pretty mature China watching community. They're quite savvy. I really ranked them as the best in the region. And among that small band of China watchers, there was a lot of disappointment because China's rhetorical posturing was mostly in support of Israel or sorry, in support of Palestine rather. They were really bludgeoning at Israel publicly every chance they had. And it really looked like they were just kind of taking a vantage of a moment to differentiate themselves from the US to say America destabilizes the region. But at the same time, people were saying, "What do you offer other than you're not America? Like, what are you doing to resolve this?" And it turned out there was very little they could. And what I got from talking with a lot of actors around the region was a sense that China's great if you need a poor or if you need a railway or if you need more trade, trade. But they're not that great on these kind of dornier diplomatic issues first because they haven't been deeply engaged in the region for very long. So they don't have the same kind of networks that the Americans are the French or the Norwegian or the British would have. And also just a sense that this isn't a core interest for Beijing. When they've announced their core interest since whatever 2007, it's very clear that it's mostly domestic. The South China Sea, their periphery. This is a place, like I said earlier, it's a place to make money. They don't see it strategically the same way America does. In the US, you've got huge Arab and Jewish immigration populations or American Jewish organizations and Muslim associations and these play a role in elections and they create, they have lobbying and pressure groups. It's important for political actors to have a position on this stuff. That's not the case in China, right? So it's really a purely geographical expression for Chinese politicians and they don't have to engage the same way. And it's important points. It does strike me though that given Xi Jinping sort of ambition and the fact that he's released four or five now, sort of big giant global initiatives around security. Going back to the base discussion, I do think that there is an ambition there. I mean, they did beginning in 2011 begin to start talking a lot more about the need for China to have bases. I think the Pentagon certainly had identified 10 or 11 places where they believed that Beijing had sort of designs to establish bases and the UAE was one of them. And I think, similarly in this diplomatic space, China as the negotiator that brings the parties together and resolves conflicts, I think there is an ambition there on the part of Chinese diplomats that, or maybe Xi Jinping, I shouldn't even say on the part of Chinese diplomats, but on the part of Xi Jinping that China played that role, but maybe they're not quite able to do it. So I personally think the ambition exists, but maybe they don't have yet, as you're saying, the depth of experience, the knowledge of the region, the United States still exerts such a strong influence that it can push back and make clear that you can't have both. And so choose. I just, from my perspective, I think it's not as though China doesn't want to play some of these roles. I think it wants to do so selectively and in a time and a place that it wants to, doesn't want to replace the US, the previous US and be responsible for everything everywhere all the time. But I do think that there is that ambition. I don't know whether you agree with that assessment. No, I do. I mean, a lot of my commentary so far has been kind of a snapshot of this moment in time, where there is a lot of hype about what China is doing here, which doesn't match the reality. But really, since the BRI was rolled out, you've seen, I always think of what, you know, the situation in the US, kind of an early Cold War, where suddenly all of this energy flows into, well, we're a global actor now. We have to, we have to understand the world better. And I think the same thing happened in China where, you know, when I would talk to China, Middle East experts, BBI, they would be anthropologists who were looking at tribal, tribal Libya in the 18th century kind of thing, right? They weren't, they didn't have. Yes, they don't. Right. And there was a, there was a great program at Beta and there was a great one, you know, a couple of CISU, a couple of universities that had kind of a Middle East program, but it was very modest. And since the BRI, we've seen just a lot more work going at the area studies programs in Chinese universities and the think-takes space has really exploded. And the, my, my, group of China Middle East experts who are really great, great language skills, great knowledge of the region, but also like a pretty small number, but they're training the next generation of really well-trained social scientists who have the language skills who come here and do fieldwork. I'm meeting one tomorrow. You know, and you can see a, a, a, a, not too distant future where China's knowledge of the region is much more mature and that will change things. And the other side of it is you know, the region is becoming more awake to China as well, you know, like I teach at a local university, everything is done in English. Everything is done in English because of the US and the UK. My students, there's a handful of students here that are learning Chinese, the Confucius Institute is directly beneath my office. It's rarely being used because students think Chinese is hard and it's foreign and why do I want to learn anything about that place. It's so far away. But, you know, the presence here, like I said, the UAE's got between 370,400,000 Chinese here. It's a very big population in a country of 10 million. And they're playing a bigger role in the cultural space and the social space and the educational space. Chinese language is part of the K-12 curriculum in the UAE now. It's been introduced as part of the curriculum in Saudi. It's kind of like when I was growing up in Canada in the 80s where kids had to learn French, but almost none of them wanted to, and they would never use it in their lives. That's kind of how that's Chinese teachers explain it to us that the students are reluctant hesitant to hate it. But they're obviously like in any group like that. There will be some that really take to it and that next generation of China watchers is being built. So you can imagine 20 years, maybe that that relationship, China's presence here will be more significant and the region's engagement will be reciprocated. But right now, it still remains massively overblown. So just to be clear, because I'm quite interested in this, is Chinese now mandatory in the K-12 board as an elective? It is mandatory in certain grades. I think they started in upper and lower grades rather and they've been rolling it out as they get more teachers. And it started as a very small pile of project, you know, of a couple of schools. And I think it was close to 200 schools within two years. So it's really taken off. It'll be interesting to see. I mean, because Chinese here in the United States, of course, has waxed and waned and there have been periods where everybody wants to study Chinese and all the wealthy families in the United States have Chinese help so that they can practice with their children and then kind of a big plummet in terms of the relationship became more fractious and more difficult and more concerning for people. So, you know, and Confucius institutes, you know, had this ambition, I remember, to have a thousand Confucius institutes by 2020. And I think they ended up with about 500 and Confucius Institute, not just in the US, but globally started to close, you know, mostly in advanced democracies. But it's just been interesting to see, but perhaps there's going to also be a resurgence, you know, I think, because China is the second largest economy in the world. And as you point out, you know, is deeply now invested, you know, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere globally. So, you know, one of the things we've seen also just in the past few years is that several Middle Eastern countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, I think UAE, have joined the BRICS. China pushed for an expansion of the BRICS and you start to see, you know, more countries, including these three, I believe, in the Middle East become members. Is this another way in which the relationship is between China and Middle East is becoming stronger, tighter, more integrated, or are there differences? We've seen some disagreements within the BRICs on certain issues. How is that playing out? Is it becoming a vehicle for closer a cooperation or a space where we're seeing increasing sort of, you know, fissures or fractures? So the Saudis haven't officially, they were, they were issued the invitation and they've sat on it ever since. So we're not really sure what Saudi's position within BRICs is. It's there for the taking if they decide they want it, but they haven't really indicated what they'll do. But the Emirates and the Iranians absolutely did, for different reasons. I mean, for Iran, it's all about international legitimacy, right? Like I think I don't think they really saw, I'm, I should preface this by saying I'm such a big BRIC skeptic. And I just don't really see the material utility for a lot of countries when they join this. For the Iranians, I mean, at the last, at the last summit in Russia, they talked about, you know, payments and local currencies. And of course, for Russia and Iran, that's great. You know, but for everybody else who wants a bunch of, you know, rubles and, you know, Iranian Reals, it's not really so helpful. But I think what Iran does get from it. And the same thing they got from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization membership. They can say to domestic audiences, international audiences, look, we're up for IAM mostly in the Western world, you know, which, you know, with their economic sanctions regimes and their heavy-handed moralizing and liberal values that they're trying to impose on all of us. But look at us, we've got like membership with the Russians and the Chinese and the Indians in Pakistan, like, in whatever percent of the world's population that SEO represents now. And whatever percentage of GDP, and it kind of legitimizes them as, look, we are not alone in the world. We have these partners. And what that means again, materially, we've seen since they've joined. They've gotten not a lot of support in their moment of need from Russia or China or India. But it has created opportunities for them. And I think there's more happening beneath the surface. I was at a conference after we saw each other in Europe. I went to another one in an Iranian scholar, an American Iranian scholar, was researching what what Russia and China are doing with Iran since the war started. And it sounded much more significant than what we're seeing in the media. You know, a lot of Chinese machinery, industrial goods going to Central Asia or Guadar and Pakistan, and then making the way to Iran to help support their their industrial power during the war. And a lot of grains from Russia. But I think joining RICS, you know, largely for Iran, that's what this represented was a chance to show people at home in abroad. Look, we do have friends. We're not as isolated as we look. And interestingly to me, there's always this narrative of what kind of leverage does China have over Iran? I flip it with the SEO and bricks to say this is created leverage for Iran over China and the other SEO and bricks members because how are you going to get any other country to join your organization if you throw existing members under the bus? And I think for Iran, this created a chance for them to say like you need me because you're two, you know, international organizations are going to look pretty flimsy if you totally leave me hanging high and dry. For the Emirates, I think it's different. I think they are looking at emerging markets. You know, the Emirates is a very economically ambitious country despite their size. They do so much with India. India, the Indian population here is about 43% of the country. Prime Minister Modi seems to be here more than he's in Delhi. And the investment, the trade, the energy relationship with India is really significant. What they've done with China has also been pretty impressive. What they do with Russia, prior to their exit from OPEC. I think OPEC was kind of the Russia angle where they'd say how can we maintain energy markets by working with Russia and our OPEC partners. So I think the Emirates looked at as a chance just to extend their influence with some pretty significant emerging markets and countries. But I don't think it I think it also dilutes the utility again of this, you know, for bricks, you can see moments when Russia and China would like bricks to be an instrument to to chastise America and their reports where this happened in the Emirates said, no, we're not signing onto that because, you know, American-Lermos' important partner. So I'm not sure that I read too much into how those two organizations really have meaningful change, particularly in the China-Mentalese space, but it is a data point worth watching for sure. Yeah, and just out of curiosity, do you have any insight? I mean, presumably for the Saudis to get an invitation to join, they must have expressed a little bit of interest at some point, right? So, you know, do you have a sense for what made them perhaps pull back or not, I guess, ratify an agreement or formally sign it, sort of an interesting, you know, issue. I think around the time that they didn't join was around the time the Biden administration was working very closely with the Saudis about a deeper security relationship that would have brought them into the Abraham Accords, and that would have involved a significant level of support for their artificial intelligence program and their commercial domestic nuclear energy program. And I think when you look at all of these incentives that were on the table, probably the Saudis were reluctant to dive or jump with both feet into bricks and create an extra layer of tension with the American administration. Fair enough. So, I think the way without saying it explicitly, I feel so the way you've described the region and the US and China is that this is a region where there is strategic competition, and the US and China are competing. And I think the US, you know, having served a few years in US government, I could say, I do think that that was the perspective at least in the previous administration that, you know, again, and you talked a little bit about what was going on with G42 and the UAE. And I think those are important data points for how the US is viewing things. I mean, is that how you would characterize this from the perspective of China? Do you think China views this region as being in competition with the United States? Or more, I think the way that you kind of set out initially as just China wants to do business, right? It wants to do business. It may have some greater strategic diplomatic ambitions, you know, further down the line. But for the moment, it wants what it wants. It wants its energy. It wants, you know, to be the sort of provider of digital infrastructure and clean tech, etc. You know, for the industries of the 21st century, but it doesn't really see itself as in competition with the United States. And if that's the case, do you think there's room for some form of cooperation between the United States and China? You know, and some issues. And what would those issues be? So in 23, a China Gulf specialist, one of the best Gulf specialists, I know in China, came here for a visit. And we're having lunch. And this again was kind of this peak hype period where everybody's talking about China replacing the US in the region. And I said, you know, I'm being kind of provocative, but I don't see you anywhere close to pure status in this region with the US. I think of China as a second tier actor. And he was like, oh, I would love it if we're at the second tier. That's where the British and the French are. We're at like the third tier. You know, I think they have a more modest view of their capacity here. And I've seen this time and again, talking to commercial actors, you know, arms or defense contractors and diplomats and journalists. And they keep saying, like, how does America see us as a strategic competitor in this part of the world where we are so far behind and we're just kind of clawing our way up? I don't, like I said a few minutes ago, that's where we are now. I don't think that's where we'll be, you know, in 10 or 20 years. But they're starting from a very, you know, say, like I said earlier, starting in the first decade of this century, I'm starting to build a presence at a kind of a nascent level and, and, you know, making pretty significant gains since, but nowhere near at this goal or scale of what the US does here. Now, you know, it only takes a few reckless decisions by the US where that could start to change. But it's not just about the US in China here, right? Like, like I said, India's a major actor here. We always say, you know, China's the number one trading partner through, you know, India's usually number two, Japan is usually number three, Korea's like top five. What you see are a lot of America's Indo-Pacific partners and allies also have pretty significant interest here. And they also have pretty significant problems with the way China does things. So this could be a competitive environment, but not just competing between the US and China, but a whole host of actors. And I think local local actors also have a lot of say as well. There was a really interesting think tank report published here in Abu Dhabi two years ago. The headline was something like, or the title rather was like great power competition and how should the UAE which direction and I kind of ruled my eyes went on other US China thing. But no, it was China India. And I thought this is interesting. And they're saying, look, India has matured defense cooperation relationship with the US. India has very deep trade relations with us and religious connections and family connections and historical cultural. We know India really well. We don't know China very well. And India works with Australia who we like and they work with Japan who we like and China doesn't seem to have very many friends that we do like or work well with. So, you know, I think local actors will see China and think transactional. We can do business with these guys. They can help us build a railroad. They can help us with our digital economy. They can help us with our renewable energy get to net zero. But I really don't think there's a whole lot of trust here and a whole lot of comfort. Now, that could change. But, you know, the Middle East expertise when I walked down a random street in DC compared to the Middle East expertise when I walk around Beijing aren't comparable. And I know a handful of Chinese speaker in the Arab world. It's really, really, really at a low level at this point in time. That will change, but it will take a long time. Okay, Farina, let me just finish up with two questions. First, something we haven't talked about. But it was really a bigger issue, I think, a few years ago. And that's the issue of the lack of support by countries in the Middle East for, you know, the U.S. in Xinjiang. And that countries seen just unwilling when the United States was working with Europe and other allies to sort of try to push China to lift, to sort of move out of the business of these labor and reeducation camps in Xinjiang. It's not a role that we're playing really right now. At least the Trump administration is not playing that role. The Congress is still interested. The fact that the United States and Europe could muster 30 or 40 countries behind it and a resolution in the U.N. and China could muster 50 or 60 countries behind it. And you didn't see, again, these Middle East countries standing up in any way. What is that a reflection of? Yeah, the wedge issue that won't wedge. But I've seen it's the U.S., the Europeans, everybody has brought this up with every official they can. And it just doesn't take hold. And a lot of it, I think, from the China side, you know, I talked about core issues a few minutes ago. And the core issues are almost all domestically focused as, you know, things like Xinjiang and Tibet and, you know, I want Hong Kong, whatever. If you brush up against one of those core interests, you're going to get the sharp end of the Chinese economic state craft stick like, you know, like Norwegians when we all shovel one the Nobel Peace Prize. And suddenly, there's salmon just rotted on the docks. And when China, sorry, when South Korea brought the Fadmas and the Fin system, and suddenly there was an unofficial boycott and tourism dropped and they got like, you know, not sanctioned, but they felt the pinch. And I think everybody knows if you take a position on something that brushes up against China's core interests, then you can expect that. And for local countries that have these dense economic relations with China, there's a reluctance to do that because the issue doesn't resonate here. And one reason why the issue doesn't resonate is because almost all media is state-owned across this part of the world. And it's not something that you'll find most publics know much about. If they do hear about it, they'll say, oh, that's just the West trying to make China look bad, the same way they try to make us look bad after 9/11. You won't see it represented in local media ever. And part of it is local geopolitics. So there was, if you remember, the Khashogia Fair back in 2018. That represented kind of a bigger competition between Turkey and Saudi and the UAE for, you know, kind of dominance of the Sunni Muslim world, which country is the rightful leader of this segment of the Muslim world. And it was a very bitter competition. And countries who were aligned against Turkey, against Erdogan, would use this issue and say, look, you're always going on about the Uyghurs. The Uyghurs are Turkic people. They're ethnically Turkic. This is his issue. Why isn't he doing anything? You know, if you want to blame someone, blame him. So there were a lot of smaller factors that would kind of create, you know, combined to make this an issue that just doesn't really take root here the way that people would expect. But the bigger one, I think just out of broader scale, is just that one of Arab deep frustration with how they've been represented in Western media and Western narratives over the past 30, 40, 50 years. And when they see Western media talk about another other, they're very skeptical. So yeah, it doesn't really take hold. Okay, fair enough. And then last, I always like to ask, you know, what if anything, if you were sitting with President Trump, you know, let's put aside Iran, what might you recommend to him in terms of thinking about, again, China's role in the region, where it stands now, where it seems to want to go, how should the US be positioning itself? Maybe not just for this moment, but for the future differently, perhaps, than what it's doing right now. Yeah, so it's unusual at this moment that, you know, we aren't hearing the strategic competition or great power competition framework being used by, at least by the President, the way that it was used in the previous administrations. And that creates an opportunity, I think, because to your point, which I didn't address, in the last question, like about how do US and Chinese interests in this part of the world either bump up against each other or line? I mean, in most regions in the world, you can look at as purely competitive, you know, say in Asia, writ large or in Latin America or Europe. You can see how China's interests really aren't very compatible with America's interests. Here, if you break down America's main interest in this part of the world, I would say it's, you know, keeping maritime shipping lanes open is really security, getting energy to global markets, I think would be America's three or interests in this part of the world. And other than Israeli security, which China doesn't concern itself with very much, I'd say the other two, they line up pretty neatly. And you can see areas where I remember talking to somebody in the State Department, either late from or early Biden. And I said, you know, there's room for cooperation. And we were trying pre-COVID to set up this dialogue between American and Chinese Middle East experts where we bring them together every six months at different capital cities across the region, just to kind of create dialogues about areas of shared interests to create a more positive, and of course, COVID happened and that project died on the vine. But my State Department friends said, you know, don't use the word cooperate, but maybe use the word coordinate. And you could see areas where coordination on certain issues would be very beneficial to both countries. And whether that's maritime security issues or whether it's how to support local development agendas, you see very different approaches to how the US and China operate in these spaces. But the end goal looks remarkably similar. So you could see how there might be opportunities to look at these different regional policy plans and think, how could we coordinate our agendas in a way that we don't have to necessarily compete here because I think local actors benefit always, you know, when there's great power competition, they can play them off each other. But I think they also feel this region has had an up-of-competition. It would like some stability. They would like to create a functional region where supply chains flow easily across countries rather than having a very, you know, fractured region of competing interests and security nightmares. And I think great powers can contribute to helping them achieve that. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a zero-sum game. I think that is a topic worth exploring further for sure. But we are out of time today. I just want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your really busy schedule and with such a time difference between Abu Dhabi and New York and sharing your really incredible expertise with us. Again, it's such a really timely moment. It's been terrific. Oh, thanks, Liz. It's been a lot of fun. So if you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more recent discourse and debate on China, I encourage you to subscribe to China Considered via the Hoover Institution YouTube channel or platform of your choice. (upbeat music)