As the Arab world reels under the fallout of the US-Iran war, President Xi Jinping has pitched China as an alternative to the America-led security order in the region.
As the Arab world reels from the fallout of the ongoing West Asia conflict, President Xi Jinping last week arrived in Egypt to pitch China as everything the United States once promised to be: a force of stability that seeks an end to the ongoing war, an economic partner that understands the pain of closed waterways, and a world power that keeps its promises.
The visit was the latest step in Xi’s efforts to supplant the United States as the major power in West Asia. As with nearly every other theatre, US President Donald Trump’s actions have made Xi’s job easier in West Asia as well.
For decades, West Asian countries aligned themselves with the United States in exchange for implicit security guarantees. As the US-Iran war drags on, the guarantee of security to Arab allies no longer stands valid. It has also triggered severe economic disruption in the region with the navigation through the Strait of Hormuz becoming perilous. The experience accelerated the countries’ turn towards China both as a security and economic alternative to the United States.
As West Asia reviews America’s standing in the region, Xi appears to be striking all the right notes. With Trump pushing to dictate his will, Xi said West Asian countries should reject external interference and decide their own affairs. As Trump granted Israel a blank cheque in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Xi said the Palestinian issue remains central to the region and should never be marginalised. Xi also supported free navigation as the US-Iran war led to the closure the Strait of Hormuz and threatened the Red Sea.
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However, the rising Chinese influence in West Asia is not simply a response to Trump’s actions. It is part of Xi’s yearslong efforts to establish China as an alternative to the US-led security and economic order in the region.
China is expanding its influence in West Asia by winning the trust and preference of an increasing number of partners, and its deep pockets, advanced defence industrial base, and alignment with Pakistan, which is leading efforts to end the US-Iran war, are helping President Xi, according to Anushka Saxena, a China researcher at the Takshashila Institution.
Xi finds common grounds with Sisi in West Asia
In Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Xi has found the perfect partner for his ambitions in West Asia. The two leaders have presented the relationship as a win-win arrangement.
While China has invested in Egypt’s automobile industry, helped build public infrastructure, and offered fighter aircraft rivalling the French Rafale, Egypt has supported China’s diplomatic initiatives in the region. Saxena highlighted that Egypt has supported Pakistan-led mediation even as it pitched itself as a peacemaker along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia to chart a path for peace in the region — and it appears poised to be the next member of the Mecca Agreement in return.
For Sisi, economic and strategic incentives for a closer relationship with China are aligning.
“As a country that itself sits atop the Suez Canal, it makes sense that Egypt wishes to rope in China to ensure its own supply chains are secured and that the broader peace initiative in the region can be backed by a superpower’s money and diplomacy. President Sisi’s turn to China, and that of the region, has also been sped up by two reasons: the absence of the West from mediation and President Trump’s display of willingness to let the global economy go to ruin by closing key maritime commerce chokepoints,” said Saxena, an Associate Fellow with Takshashila’s Geostrategy Programme.
What is happening with Egypt appears to be a blueprint for the rest of the region.
As Firstpost has previously covered, under their mutual defence agreement, Pakistan was supposed to help Saudi Arabia buy state-of-the-art Chinese military technology. While that continues behind the scenes, Xi appears to be building a public track with Egypt.
Saxena told Firstpost, “President Xi’s visit came on the heels of the first iteration of the China-Egypt joint aerial military drills in which the Chinese air force deployed a substantial contingent of fighters, multirole aircraft, and drones to Egypt. So clearly, Egypt is seeking out big guns for itself, and we may soon see China selling these jets and drones to it in bulk.”
As Egypt already fields the largest military in the Arab world and seeks a closer partnership with China, Sisi naturally supports Xi’s call for a new security order in the region. Saxena said the idea of a regional order shaped by its Arab participants and largely free of Western involvement is particularly appealing to the Egyptian leader.
While Egypt is providing Xi with a foothold in the region, Pakistan is helping expand Chinese influence from that base.
“China pitches itself as merely a supplicant in the regional actors’ endeavour to resolve their issues on their own terms, propagating non-interference and sovereignty. Pakistan supports not just those articulations and principles, it is also invested in making sure China becomes a regional player. Hence, we see diplomatic alignment between Pakistan and China, but also these two along with Turkey and Saudi on what peace and a new regional order will mean in the aftermath of the war,” said Saxena.