President Xi Jinxing’s visit to the Middle East last week appeared to be business as usual. Short and relatively low-key, his studious avoidance of controversy was in keeping with China’s longstanding approach to the region: focus on energy and economics, and keep your head down on security and political matters. The extended absence of a senior Chinese visitor to the neighborhood and the cancellation of Xi’s trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt last year had given this three-country tour the flavor of a reluctant necessity, with an agenda rich on trade and investment but otherwise limited. Promote the Belt and Road initiative, deliver a speech to the Arab League, toast the 60th anniversary celebrations in Egypt, and pull off quick stops to Riyadh and Tehran without getting embroiled in their intensifying rivalry.
Yet for all Xi’s careful treading around its high politics, this is now the region where many of the most significant shifts in China’s global security role are underway. The last 18 months alone have seen a number of important firsts: an agreement to build the first Chinese overseas naval base in Djibouti, the first non-combatant evacuation by PLA-Navy vessels in Yemen, the first deployment of a battalion of combat troops for peacekeeping in South Sudan, and the first confirmed kills by Chinese drones, with the Iraqi army’s strikes on ISIS targets in Ramadi. Go further back and you also have the first deployment of Chinese warships for military operations outside Asia in the Gulf of Aden, and the first use of PLA naval assets to support a civilian evacuation in Libya. Another even more dramatic first has been under discussion in Beijing recently: whether the PLA should involve itself directly in military actions against ISIS in Syria.
For a region that is supposed to embody Chinese strategic caution, this is a striking level of experimentation. While Xi touted dialogue and development as the path to security during his remarks in Cairo, China has shown more willingness to utilize military means in the greater Middle East than in any region beyond Asia—and the trends that have been driving this shift are likely to persist.
First has been a change in the terrorist threat that China faces. After years in which the most significant Uighur militant presence was in the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan, recent accounts suggest that Uighur militant groups, now operating in Syria, are larger and more capable. ISIS itself is also one of the few transnational jihadi organizations to have targeted China so explicitly. Where Bin Laden tactically avoided taking Beijing on as another enemy, Baghdadi has had no such reservations, and the killing of a Chinese hostage, Fan Jinghui, is likely to prove a moment of real symbolic importance.
Second is a marked increase in the number of Chinese workers in the region and growing expectations at home about the Chinese government’s responsibility to protect them. This has been true elsewhere, but the turmoil in the Middle East in recent years has made it the most consistent focus of concern. Beijing was caught off guard by the unexpectedly large presence of Chinese nationals in Libya and has evacuated personnel from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen in the last few years. That presence will further spike with the new wave of industrial investments under the One Belt, One Road scheme. Similar considerations apply to assets and trade routes. The PLA Navy was sent to the Gulf of Aden, not simply as a gesture of cooperation, but to ensure the safety of Chinese ships and to help secure the vast Chinese imports and energy supplies that pass through the waterway. Neither was the deployment of Chinese combat troops for peacekeeping duty in South Sudan a purely virtuous act. Behind-the-scenes negotiations were focused on whether they should be defending Chinese oil installations as well as endangered civilians.
Third, as Xi noted in his speech to the Arab League, is the sense of a “vacuum” as the United States steps back. While Xi argued that China is not “attempting to fill” the vacuum, the reference reflects Beijing’s anxiety that a more energy-independent United States will be increasingly unwilling to perform its usual security role in the region. Just as the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan prompted serious Chinese diplomatic efforts to forge a political settlement there, perceptions of a diminished U.S. presence in the Middle East are already catalyzing tentative moves on China’s part to adopt a more active stance.
Xi’s visit itself was no turning point. China is still determined to maintain its friendships with all the region’s major powers and steer clear of too much exposure to its knottiest politics. In recent years, Beijing has rebuffed solicitations from regimes in the Middle East that fear U.S. abandonment and want to see China step in on a grander scale. Yet for all its reluctance and caution, as Beijing’s economic plans for the region mushroom and its security concerns grow, the traditional limitations on its role can no longer be taken for granted.
