When President Xi Jinping hosted Saudi King Salman in Beijing last month, the main agenda was trade and investment. In fact, China has a much broader role in the Middle East – a role which could easily drag it politically and militarily into a web of regional tensions that Beijing doesn’t have the expertise to handle. Photo: AFP
Lesson for China: no relationship with the Middle East can be ‘just business’
Rob Edens says no purely economic approach will work in a region rife with sectarian rivalries, as China is finding out as its belt and road wades its way through East Asia to Europe. Its involvement in the Gulf countries may be more than it bargained for
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Belt and Road Initiative
When President Xi Jinping hosted Saudi King Salman in Beijing last month, the main agenda was trade and investment. In fact, China has a much broader role in the Middle East – a role which could easily drag it politically and militarily into a web of regional tensions that Beijing doesn’t have the expertise to handle. Photo: AFP