China’s imperial model and the Muslim World

DAVID P. GOLDMAN

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China's increaaing soft power in the Global South, especially the Muslim world, is illustrated by the new high-tech capital city the Chinese are building for Egypt. Photo: The China Global South Project

The Global South, with 85% of the world’s population, has drifted out of the Western sphere of influence, as the United States and its allies discovered when countries with 70% of the world population rejected United Nations sanctions against Russia after February 2022.

The West found this out a second time October 27 when 120 countries voted for a UN General Assembly resolution opposed by the United States that failed to condemn Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

By far the biggest driver of this tectonic shift in world politics is China’s growing economic preeminence in the developing world.

Notably, China did this with a total forward deployment of 200 troops (marines at China’s base in Djibouti), in contrast to the $7 trillion that the United States spent overseas in the Global War on Terror during the past twenty years. The US Defense Department and various think tanks issue dire warnings about China’s military ambitions in Eurasia, but so far China has employed nothing but soft power.

China now exports more to the Muslim world ($42 billion a month) than to the United States ($38 billion a month), thanks to expanding ties with Malaysia and Indonesia, the Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia and economic diplomacy in the Persian Gulf.

China’s exports to the US reached the $40 billion/month mark in 2018 when exports to Muslim-majority countries stood at only $30 billion. The growth in China’s exports during the past five years has come entirely from the Global South, including the Muslim world. Overall, China now exports as much to the Global South as it does to all developed markets.

Indonesia and Malaysia are China’s largest Muslim trading partners, as a result of the Sinocentric integration of Asian trade and investment.

The new Silk Road across Asia has made a major contribution to Chinese exports. The Central Asian former republics of the Soviet Union now take almost $5 billion a month in Chinese goods, up from about $2 billion a month in 2018. That has a security vector, to be sure: After America’s disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, China concluded that it could not rely on the United States to suppress jihadists on or near its borders; it then poured funds into neighboring economies.

American strategists should listen closely to Professor Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University, who told the “Observer” news site on November 3 that “the world has long entered the post-American era. This does not mean that the United States is no longer important. The United States is still very important. It means the United States … going against the trend.”

Referring to US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s catchphrase “small yard, high fence” to describe US controls on technology exports, Zhang said, “We can think of this as the self-restraint of a frog in a well.”

The United States, Zhang said, “has isolated itself within this high fence around a small yard. Outside is the entire Global South, the entire non-Western world, which has the world’s largest market, largest resources, and most development opportunities.”

In Shenzhen last July, I visited a Huawei plant that produces 1,800 5G base stations a day on three assembly lines, with only 15 workers per line, down from 80 a couple of years ago. That plant – one of several operated by Huawei – turns out nearly 700,000 base stations a year, or a third of present world capacity. China has the industrial capacity to wire up the world.

This provides China with enormous political leverage. Zhang told “The Observer” in the cited interview:

We want the United States to change, but it is not easy…. China has had an uninterrupted civilization for thousands of years and has a lot of wisdom deriving from its own civilization. For example, when China proposes “peace and development,” many Americans and Westerners do not believe it.

When revolutions broke out in Arab countries, we advised the West not to incite and support the “Arab Spring” because it would turn into the “Arab Winter.”

One of the biggest problems in Europe right now is the refugee crisis. Many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been torn to pieces by color revolutions, and a large number of refugees have poured into Europe. The only way to solve the problem of refugees is through peace and development.

The Belt and Road Initiative we are promoting includes promoting peaceful development in Africa and the Middle East, so that we can reduce the number of refugees. Therefore, rationally, European countries should participate in China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative.Refugees en route to Europe. Photo: Huck Magazine / screen shot

Zhang is entirely correct: No other country besides China has the resources and capacity to make a dent in the economic misery that drives refugees towards Europe. Asia Times editor Uwe Parpart made the same point in an October 18 essay for the Swiss newspaper Weltwoche.

China raised per capita income from about $3 to $30 a day between 1979 and the present, and understands how advanced technology can make a huge difference in the lives of very poor people.

Digital infrastructure makes it possible for rural people to access microcredit and sell on world markets, obtain treatment via telemedicine, or receive instruction in schools that have few teachers, with a $60 smartphone. Applications of Artificial Intelligence may do more in backward economies than developed ones.

Ten years ago I speculated that a “Pax Sinica” might emerge in the Middle East. In 2022 China imported 53% of its oil from the Persian Gulf. It has a clear interest in preventing hostilities from interrupting its energy lifeline. In that respect China is a moderating influence on Iran; as the largest customer for Iran’s oil and its largest provider of industrial goods, China has considerable influence in Tehran.

Like most countries, the Chinese view the rest of the world through a mirror rather than a telescope. Chinese civilization assimilated peoples who still speak 200 dialects within six major language groups.

The Chinese empire, unlike Christian Europe, never attempted to unify its peoples through religion. It demanded that they become “civilized,” as Sinologist Francisco Sisci observes, which meant learning the written characters, wearing Chinese dress, and paying taxes to the emperor.

Otherwise, they were free to speak any dialect and worship any gods they pleased. The empire in turn provided infrastructure – indispensable in the great flood plain of Central China – and order.

China looks at the peoples of the Middle East as virtual provinces of a new Chinese economic empire, and wants them to stay out of trouble and concentrate on making money in good Chinese fashion. In a video conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz November 3, President Xi Jinping responded to German representations about Ukraine and Israel as follows, according to the official readout:

Xi Jinping pointed out that whether it is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or the Ukrainian crisis, to address its root causes we need to think more deeply about security issues, adhere to a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security concept and promote the construction of balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture.

Squeezing the security space of other countries and unilaterally supporting one side while ignoring the legitimate demands of the other will lead to regional imbalances and lead to the expansion and escalation of conflicts.

Of course, it is not quite that simple. There are exceptions, and China’s approach to dealing with jihadists within its own borders needs no mention here except to say that it has been quite effective in its own fashion. China has a long (but now distant) history of punitive expeditions against unassimilable barbarians.

In my capacity as an adviser to a foundation engaged in Sino-Israel relations, SIGNAL, I have attended any number of meetings where prominent Chinese thought leaders explained that China’s stance on Middle East issues stemmed from the fact that China had a large Muslim population that favored the Palestinians, as well as over 50 Muslim embassies compared with one Jewish embassy.

But China has difficulty understanding why everyone doesn’t simply split things down the middle and get back to business. The Chinese have a deep aversion to nationalism, including its Zionist variation.

There is a flaw in that line of thinking, set in relief by China’s tripwire sensitivity over the Taiwan issue. China will go to war to stop Taiwan from gaining de jure independence because one renegade province might set the example for many renegade provinces.

The ethnicities of the Chinese empire might be preserved like flies in amber, but they are not dead, and not necessarily quiescent. The ruling adage of Chinese governance is the famous maxim from the Romance of Three Kingdoms: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.”

China has had thousands of years to assimilate its ethnicities, but still can’t be sure of their adherence. All the less so can it expect the nations and tribes of Western Asia to behave like Chinese, especially when the empire has no interest in providing security.

China’s stance on Middle East issues remains at the level of atmospherics. Beijing scores points in the Global South at minimal cost. But China’s role could become far more important.

As Zhang, the professor quoted above, observes, China could play a pivotal role in the refugee crisis. One specific refugee crisis that China might help resolve is Gaza.

The obvious solution to the Gaza problem was proposed to Egypt’s late President Sadat by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978: Egypt should annex Gaza, and resolve the refugee crisis by naturalizing the Gazans. Sadat refused, and Western diplomats have never pursued this alternative.Second chance soon? Sadat and Begin, 1977. Photo: Wilson Center

Egypt is very poor, with two-fifths of its population living on $3 a day. It already has a jihadist problem with the local Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas. It has jailed 40,000 Brotherhood activists. It doesn’t need more.

If Israel can dismember Hamas, however, Egypt’s main objection to annexing Gaza would be economic. That is something that China, working together with the Gulf States, could solve. China already is deeply engaged in Egypt, building infrastructure and a new high-tech city.

If China wanted to establish a leading role in the Middle East, assisting Egypt and Israel in resolving the Gaza crisis in this fashion might denote a diplomatic revolution.