“It’s great power on the cheap,” Rolland says. “What China really wants is to make sure that the US is isolated on the global stage. And therefore China is positioning itself as the leader of the Global South, the leader of people in countries that are supposedly oppressed by Western countries,” Rolland says.

“On the other hand, China doesn’t have any interest in playing a major active role and providing security for the region.”

It is a view echoed by Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who argues that China had been missing in action on the heavy lifting of conflict resolution negotiations in the region.

“China has acted as if it was a diplomatic heavyweight, and then when the time came for diplomatic heavyweights to use their influence, China played like a backbencher,” he says.

“There was a sense that China was ascendant in the Middle East, but since October 7, China’s been an afterthought. It’s not been involved in any of the serious negotiations.

And “it has not used its considerable influence with Iran and others to preserve freedom of navigation in the Red Sea,” he says, referring to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group’s attacks on cargo ships along the crucial shipping route.

China courts the Middle East

One year ago, China surprised the US and its allies by brokering a rapprochement between decades-long foes Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose bitter rivalry has played out in destabilising proxy wars throughout the region over the years. The deal, which restored diplomacy between the two countries, was widely touted as heralding China’s emergence as a serious international mediator. It also provided the region with a glimpse of a potential future where America was not the playmaker.

The deal came off the back of years-long efforts by Beijing to strengthen its influence in the Middle East through regional alliances and strategic partnerships, as it expanded its economic footprint (half of China’s oil imports come from the Persian Gulf). Last year, for example, Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a trade and security grouping founded by China and Russia, while at Beijing’s urging, the economic bloc of developing countries known as BRICS (comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) – has expanded to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE.

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Chinese academic Hongda Fan, from Shanghai International Studies University, attributes his country’s rising status in the region to its pivot away from America and not a deliberate political strategy by China to chip away at US hegemony.

“If Middle Eastern countries are becoming more and more welcoming to China, I think the fundamental reason is that they are becoming less and less fond of the United States. This is not at all the result of China attacking the United States,” he says.

However, Beijing has found fertile fodder in decades of Washington foreign policy missteps in the Middle East allowing it to court Arab countries with its vision of a multipolar world not dominated by America, and promises its own diplomatic model will be one centred on non-interference into other countries’ affairs.

China has seized on the latest Gaza conflict to further this aim, says Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate fellow with London think tank Chatham House. Recent “unity” talks hosted in Beijing between Hamas, and its chief rival Fatah, which leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, may have been spurned as diplomatic-lite in the West, but in the Global South it carried the popular message that China viewed Hamas as a legitimate political faction, not a terrorist group.

“China wants to challenge the United States and Israel’s narrative on Hamas, which sees wiping out Hamas as the only way for peace between Palestinians and Israel,” Aboudouh says.

“It wants to present itself as a mediator of great power, but one that is not doing mediation according to the Western playbook.”

In the China Daily, an English-language newspaper controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, the meeting was trumpeted in an editorial as “a clear indication that China is making every effort to resolve the crisis in Gaza,” while “the Biden administration has continued to get blood on its hands by supplying arms to Israel”.

But Aboudouh says the posturing shouldn’t be confused with any intention by China to dedicate resources and expertise to replacing the US in the region. Though it has considerable economic and energy interests in the region, and a clear stake in the Middle East not descending into full-blown chaos, he says China is happy to free-ride on the US doing the heavy lifting - watching it absorb all the attendant risks, financial costs and criticisms that come with such a role.

China’s Gaza calculation

The official line from Beijing on the Gaza conflict has been a pro-Palestinian one, consistent with China’s long history of supporting the creation of a Palestinian state. It has never condemned Hamas’ slaughter of Israelis on October 7 and, as the war has dragged on, it has stepped up its criticism of Israel.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last month labelled Israel’s war in Gaza “a disgrace for civilisation”, while in February Ma Xinmin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry legal adviser, used a speech to the International Court of Justice to argue that Palestinians had a right to “armed struggle” to “resist foreign oppression”. This action should be distinguished from terrorism, he argued, in a statement that was welcomed by Hamas.

Alterman said China appeared to have made a shrewd political calculation that its relationship with Israel was necessary collateral damage in its pursuit of its broader goal to rally the Global South against the US.

“Chinese colleagues tell me the government’s view is that the US is close to Israel. So things that are bad for Israel are bad for the United States, and that’s a good enough reason to take a pro-Hamas perspective,” he says.

Put another way, “ultimately, the Chinese are on the Chinese side,” says Benjamin Ho, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“Chinese special interests come first, and if supporting the Palestinian cause allows China to build its affinity and sympathy with the Global South, that’s great for them. The Chinese are very pragmatic,” he says.

What is China’s long game?

The US’s dominance as the key security broker in the Middle East is underpinned by its network of military bases and alliances across the region. A common view among experts is that China, as the relatively new kid on the block, doesn’t have the military capabilities or the political will to replace the US in this role.

Public appeals by the Biden administration for China to flex its influence with Iran to calm tensions in the region, Aboudouh says, should be viewed as a tactical play to expose the limits of Beijing’s influence.

“I think [the Biden administration] understands that China doesn’t have political clout that allows it to do that with Iran, but they are making this known to tell the Middle Eastern countries, ‘we are the only responsible power that will guarantee your security in the region and look, China won’t do anything’,” he says.

“China doesn’t have expertise in the Middle East, unlike what a lot of people think. Its diplomats are not well versed in the complications of the Middle East and its historical baggage.”

But arguably the most significant reason China has no interest in getting its hands dirty in the Middle East is because its focus is elsewhere. That is, in the Indo-Pacific, where it has ramped up its militarisation of the South China Sea in line with its number one priority of bringing Taiwan under its control.

“The Chinese are quite happy for the US to be bogged down in the Middle East and less focused on their containment of China in the Asia Pacific,” Ho says.

The Gaza and Ukraine wars are among the first major tests of China’s role as a superpower in international conflict. What isn’t yet clear is whether China’s professed philosophy of non-intervention is one that will hold up when its interests are more directly challenged, such as in the Indo-Pacific, or what it means for international security if the world is re-ordered in line with China’s vision.

“If China becomes the dominant power, what does this behaviour now tell us about the stability and peace of the world in the future if China doesn’t want to get involved in resolving conflicts, saying to each country, ‘ these are your internal affairs, we don’t want to interfere’,” Nadège Rolland says.

“I think this means that the future world is going to be much more on fire than it is already.”

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