By Michael Feller
Reports last night that Beijing would receive an envoy of Syria’s Assad regime will no doubt rekindle Western commentary that China is supporting a fellow dictatorship in the vain hope that it can stem the tide of freedom and democratisation that is sweeping the Arab world.
Yet the reality is a lot more complex. Similar delegations from Syria’s opposition, as well as confirmation from the Chinese foreign ministry that is speaking to both sides, speaks of a pragmatism and and plasticity within Chinese policy circles that not only manifested itself in the final weeks of the Libyan civil war last year, but describes exactly China’s yum cha economics since the Deng Xiaoping era from the early 1980s.
Just as China doesn’t let ideology get in the way of generating economic growth, China won’t let alliances get in the way of foreign policy realpolitik and while this may cause nerves to fray in places like Ashgabat and Tehran (both Turkmenistan and Iran are important energy exporters to China, but hardly unique in that regards), it should come as no surprise. As the Chinese proverb goes: one’s acquaintances may fill the world, but one’s true friends are but few.
This kind of pragmatism, while worrying for some in the West who could see their difficult diplomacy free-ridden, should however put a lid on concerns that civil wars in the Middle East should end up precipitating a super power conflict in much the same way that revolutions and insurgencies did during the Cold War. While Tehran would surely want superpower patronage to scare away the West or the Israelis, unlike the possible exception of a revanchist Russia, they’re unlikely to get such support from the Chinese.
Similarly, while Islamists throughout the region would surely welcome the quiet support of an enemy’s enemy – in much the same way as the Mujahideen had CIA and People’s Liberation Army backing in their campaign against Soviet Afghan occupation – these days their enemy is as much China as it is the US. Outside of the Arabian Peninsula or the Maghreb, one of Al Qaeda’s chief foci of operations is arguably China’s Xinjiang province. Abdul Shakoor al-Turkistani, the so-called Emir of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement is now reportedly running Jihadi operations in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, on the border with Afghanistan.
While shadows of a new Great Game may yet play out across the Eurasian landmass as Chinese and Western interests rub up against each other, for the moment I believe China, the US and Europe are all broadly aligned on Middle East policy, albeit with frustrating differences of process in the UN Security Council. For the moment, cheap energy and clear sea lines of communication are what matters for the world’s biggest economies and while petrostates like Russia and Saudi Arabia may have some desire to see the crisis escalate and oil prices spike, if that caused another global recession and killed demand for their biggest customers then they too would ultimately suffer.
The spoiler in all of this is of course Iran’s internal drivers and should the regime feel boxed in the event of Assad’s fall in Syria it may yet become more unpredictable, not less. As for China however, amid reports that the black flag of Jihadism is rising outside Aleppo, or that weapons are still being sent over from Iran, nobody has a greater interest in seeing things cool down then a country that by 2030 will import 85% of its oil and faces deep political uncertainties of its own.
Michael Feller is an investment strategist for Macro Investor.