MIDDLE EAST HISTORY POLITICS CULTURE XIII MIDDLE EAST XIII | Page 183

postcolonial countries, its Middle Eastern policy in a true sense aimed to
ensure China’s own strategic interests free of ideological issues, without
opposing the West directly. In this regard, Beijing’s key concern appeared to
be oil: China became a net oil importer in 1993. 27
While developing its formal policy towards the Middle East region,
China always mentions its ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’. Beijing
continuously let the region’s states choose their own political and social
systems, supported their sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence,
meanwhile it opposed other countries’ external interventionsin those states’
internal affairs. By adopting such a strategy, Beijing gradually developed good
relations with the region’s governments and made all possible efforts to
secure the county’s vital energy needs. 28
This position China staked out in Bandung during Asian African
Conference of nonaligned states in 1955. Later, in 1974, China’s leader Deng
Xiaoping addressed his speech on the United Nations General Assembly by
the following idea: “China is a part of Third world, in contrast with a US-led
capitalist bloc of First world and a Soviet-led socialist bloc of Second world”.
Anyway, these principles of peaceful coexistence were obviously correct in
China’s foreign policy only during four decades after its independence, as that
time Beijing had little and limited interest, involvement and activities in
developing world. The ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’ became
challenging for Beijing to uphold since the 1990s, when China increased its
global moves in international arena. 29
China’s own Muslim population, basically based in its Xinjiang
province, is considered to be another concern. Nevertheless, Chinese global
moves are directed not to involve religious issues in its Middle Eastern policy.
On the face of it, Beijing never makes a definitive choice between Shiite and
Yuan L., China’s Strategic Interests in the Gulf and Trilateral Relations among
China, the U.S. and Arab Countries, in China’s Growing Role in the Middle East:
Implications for the Region and Beyond, Washington, DC: Nixon Center, 2010, p. 24.
28 Weitz R., How China Sees the Middle East, The Diplomat, September 6, 2011
https://thediplomat.com/2011/09/how-china-sees-middle-east/
29 See Shichor Y., Fundamentally Unacceptable yet Occasionally Unavoidable: China’s
Options on External Interference in the Middle East, China Report, Vol. 49, No. 1,
2013.
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