Below is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast with Tuvia Gering.
Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get, well, access. Access to, not only our great daily newsletter, but to all of the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, and of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region, to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It’s a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
I’m Kaiser coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Last week on March 10th, an announcement out of Beijing caught many foreign policy analysts quite off guard. China had brokered the normalization of diplomatic relations between two longstanding enemies — Saudi Arabia and Iran. There, in the accompanying photos, was Wang Yi, who was, until recently, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and is now the Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party. And there he was standing between Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Security Council, and Musaad bin Mohammed Al Aiban, who is Saudi minister of State. In a statement jointly released by all three parties, we learned that the meetings had taken place from March 6th to March 10th with the delegations from Iran and Saudi Arabia led by their respective top national security advisors. And it was news for me at least, that there had also been talks in 2021 and 2022 in Iraq and in Oman. Though it wasn’t clear from the statement whether China was in any way involved in those. Immediately after, there was a huge flurry of commentary, but many, including myself, I should hasten to add, were really unsure of what to make of it.
How did this come about? Had it been a long time in the making? Was it diplomatically difficult? What was the best way to understand it? Was it just a symbolic victory or? So, it’s hard to get a good sense of its ultimate significance. And I wonder whether it was just something that fell into Beijing’s lap that doesn’t signify much, and therefore it maybe shouldn’t be exaggerated, a one-off kind of thing. Or was it the beginning of a new era of Chinese-led diplomatic initiatives? Maybe the first instantiation of the vaunted Global Security Initiative that Beijing has been talking about, and about which it released a concept paper just last month. And of course, there are the implications for the Ukraine war. Not many people who I’ve talked to were very impressed with the framework that the Chinese Foreign Ministry put out about peace in the Ukraine conflict.
But would this apparent success with Iran and Saudis, or should it really give us cause to recalibrate our expectations as Xi gets ready to speak with Vladimir and Zelensky and then meet possibly with Putin in Russia? So, joining me to help make sense of this development and to answer these, and myriad other questions, about Beijing’s apparent diplomatic coup is Tuvia Gering. Tuvia is an astute observer of China and its relations with the countries of the Middle East. He is a researcher at The Diane and Guilford Glazer Israel China Policy Center at the Institute for National Security Studies, INSS. And he’s also a non-resident fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. He writes the excellent Discourse Power Substack, which is one that you should definitely be subscribing to. Tuvia joins me from Jerusalem. Tuvia Gering, welcome to Sinica.
Tuvia Gering: Thank you so much for having me, Kaiser. It’s a pleasure.
Kaiser: Yeah, thank you for making the time. And since this is your first time on Sinica, I mean, you’ve written before for The China Project. Of course, and I’ve heard you many times on other programs like our sister show on China in Africa.
Tuvia: No, China in the Global South.
Kaiser: China in the Global South. So, they have two podcasts. Just making sure people subscribe to both of them. Why don’t we start with a little background about you and how you got interested in studying China and its relationship with the Middle East?
Tuvia: Well, I’m looking at one of the reasons I got interested. My good friend and mentor, Alexander Pevzner, who you know from Twitter…
Kaiser: Sure.
Tuvia: He recommended me many eons ago to subscribe to this erstwhile platform called The China Project and to listen to Sinica, many, many, many years ago, just when you started. And I was hooked. I loved it. I want to be as cool as you guys and guests you have on the show. I was just a janitor, cleaning houses and enjoying myself and listening. And I’d been studying China and Chinese and then university. And I started working actually with Alex at the Israeli-Chinese Media Center. So, very early on, I was working on research and policy. And later after finishing my masters, I joined a think tank here, a couple actually, with more recently moving to the Institute of Financial Security Studies, Israel-China Policy Program, or Policy Center, sorry. And also with the Atlantic Council last year. And here I am now speaking with you.
Kaiser: And you’re hosting your own podcast too. I saw, I think he was your first episode of the INSS podcast, right?
Tuvia: Yeah, I dabbled in it last week, a week and a half ago with no other than Senior Colonel retired Zhou Bo, whom I translated many times in the past. So, it’s pretty fun to actually speak with someone I’ve been reading and writing about for so long, and I think he enjoyed it too. We’re still talking, so it’s a pretty fruitful conversation.
Kaiser: Yeah, it was a great interview. I want to ask you all about that toward the end of the hour. But we’ll definitely put a link up to that, that interview that you did. But let’s just jump right in. Let’s talk about the Iranian-Saudi deal that was brokered by China. What do we know about how the normalization talks actually came about? I mean, because I know that Xi Jinping hosted President Ebrahim Raisi in Beijing in February. And back in December, Xi himself had gone to Riyadh. So, can we assume that this is something that Xi Jinping had a personal hand in and has been in the works for a while?
Tuvia: Yeah, sure. So, they were undergoing secret negotiations in the four days preceding to Friday announcement on March 10th. In Beijing and the both sides of Saudi Arabia and Iran have been represented by security and intelligence delegations. They’ve been doing this kind of shadow diplomacy in the last few weeks and month preceding to the event. And, as you mentioned, in December, Xi Jinping made this very notable visit to the region in Riyadh for the three summits. And according to Chinese sources, he floated that idea. He did mention, as they’ve been mentioning all through these years, a Chinese initiative for Gulf security but no one paid attention because they’ve been doing that for the last few years and no one had taken it seriously.
But then with the President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran coming to Beijing three weeks ago in February, Xi Jinping probably was able to find the window of opportunity that everyone had been looking for. And China basically pushed an open door. Both sides of the conflict, Iran and Saudi, had been meaning to reach some sort of rapprochement — Iran for even earlier than the two years. You mentioned in the introduction, Iraq and Oman had been carrying out these negotiations before, but with the change of government in Iraq, it made it less possible. And as America itself has recognized, China now is the only great power that could make such a thing happen. Because we all know the nature of Iran-U.S. relationship, we know the nature of Russia and how it’s been down in Ukraine and its invasion. So, it only leaves us with China that had been interested in dabbling in diplomacy and negotiations in the past.
And all the stars aligned where both parties have been interested for their own internal and external reasons. And the opportunity arose, and Xi Jinping rose to the occasion, I guess. And before that, even if you take a step back, Wang Yi had been doing shadow diplomacy as well. So, in March 21, he visited six countries in the region, no less. Yang Jiechi, also a couple months later. The following year, you had six countries again coming to Wuxi, if I recall, and meeting the Chinese side. And there they also floated this idea. So, a lot of back and forth that preceded this event. And Friday was the culmination and the result we’re seeing now.
Kaiser: So, even somebody like you who has been watching all of this diplomacy happening, were you caught by surprise though by the actual announcement on March 10th?
Tuvia: Yeah, I was caught by surprise, like the rest of the world combined. And in Beijing too, I’ve been talking with Chinese researchers, and they study the Middle East, they’re sitting in Beijing, and they themselves, on record, I can send you links, said they had no idea it was happening. And the most surprising thing was not just that China led it, which is extremely unusual. It’s not just unusual, it’s unprecedented in Chinese diplomatic history. It’s unprecedented in Middle East diplomatic history and even more than that, the U.S. was not in the room, which is also unusual. And after that, that it happened during the two sessions, which is, of course, the most important political event after the Party event a few months ago when Xi Jinping was coronated for the third time as the leader of the state and Central Military Commission. And he was able to pull it off during this time and with this really unusual circumstances. That’s why it was so surprising.
Kaiser: Yeah. Often we hear about these diplomatic efforts and when they’re trying to resolve what many would’ve assumed were pretty intractable, difficult problems. I mean, this is a relationship that has been bedeviled by all sorts of issues as we’ll go through. But usually we hear that in advance that these talks are going to be held. There’s a lot of discussion, there’s a lot of speculation. There’s press coverage, there’s heated debate. But China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia seemed only to have publicized this, obviously, once the deal had already been sealed and delivered it was a fait accompli. Were there advantages to doing it this way?
Tuvia: Yeah, there’s many of advantages to keeping it under wraps. So, one thing that was reported in The Wall Street Journal was that the conversations allegedly were carried out in Persian and Arabic and in Chinese and Mandarin, but never in English, because probably they feared that Americans were listening or something. And the U.S. said that Saudis had kept them in the loop all the time, but it’s hard to know. But China, for sure, and the Chinese analyst I translated, said that it was in extremely important to keep it secretive as possible because of external interference of some certain countries — wink, wink — hampering or torpedoing the process.
Kaiser: So, I noted when I read the statement that it used the boiler plate Chinese diplomatic language about affirmation of the respect for the sovereignty of states and the non-interference in the internal affairs of state. Should we read anything into that? I mean, what was that intended to be about? Is this sort of putting a Chinese stamp on it distinctly?
Tuvia: Yeah, there’s a couple ways to look at it, but as you and I have been following this closely, and Chinese language and diplomacy, we have been conditioned like Pavlovian dogs — apologies for the metaphor, but roll with me for a second — to know, after reading Chinese media for so long, we make immediate connection between all these codewords to the U.S. undue influence globally and in the Middle East. So, China doesn’t have to say anything [other] than we want the Middle East to be master of its own fate, and we think that the East is rising in the West is declining, and the Middle East is looking East, and we have the Beijing model, or the Beijing consensus. Another wink, wink for the Washington consensus. And all of us immediately understand because they’ve been connecting between all these different concepts in our head to understand them as a criticism of the U.S.-led international order, U.S. mode of governance, and what it described as the rule-based international order.
That’s one aspect to look at it. Another thing is for the man, Xi Jinping himself, and Xi Jinping’s China. So, they made sure that we know, and the world knows that Xi Jinping personally was involved in facilitating this peace talk, because he is a Confucian philosopher king, right after the two sessions where he was coronated as that. And he has solutions because he was able to identify the problems. Just right before we record this podcast, Xi Jinping unveiled another global initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative.
Kaiser: Civilization. Yeah.
Tuvia: Yeah. You saw that. It’s pretty amazing. Xi Jinping had always had lofty aspirations for the world. And as we’ve been conditioned to think of, Xi also is someone who’s concerned for the fate of humanity, that’s why he unveiled the Community of Shared Future for Mankind. That’s why from the beginning, 10 years ago, almost to the day, he unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative. And that has really evolved over the years. And more recently, last year and the year before that, with the Global Development Initiative in September, and after that, in April last year, the Global Security Initiative, and again, it’s global by definition. And China believes that after 40 years of achieving this “manmade miracle” of double digit growth, it has figured it out. It has the solution. It has the Chinese wisdom to solve all the ailments aching the world. And like any good doctor, it can give the world the prescription to solve their problems.
So, when I read Chinese analysts that study the Middle East, they talk about these people that come from all these sand dunes and undeveloped countries that started from the same starting point in the race. But now look where China is — the second-largest economy or the biggest with PPP. If you look at it, and it’s a superpower, but all the Middle Eastern countries, they are all relegated way, way back. And they look at the Chinese success model and they want a piece of that. And China, the benevolent that it is, it is willing to offer them Chinese solutions and Chinese wisdom. And because Xi Jinping is such a great Marxist and has scientific knowledge of the world, with it leading leadership of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, they’re able also to really find the root of every problem.
So, now we see it often when they talk about Ukraine and the war of Russian invasion. Between two reasonable people sitting here and looking at the war, we pretty much understand what’s the real cause of the war. It’s one country invaded another, but in Chinese narratives, the root cause is NATO expansionism. And the same applies for the Middle East. It also has root problems that China was able to identify. And the root cause for the Middle East problems and the key for its solution is development. And as soon as the region will be developed, then you solve the great development deficit. The great security deficit will follow. And then you have two other deficits that Xi Jinping has been able to identify, namely trust deficit and governance deficit, and I think the new initiative on Global Civilization probably addresses one of them.
So, all this combined adds to the Chinese solution and wisdom we saw last Friday. And remember that this is one piece of a global puzzle. Again, global by definition.
Kaiser: Fascinating. Fascinating. Let’s look at the actual substance of what was agreed to. So besides the things that come with diplomatic recognition, like the exchange of ambassadors and the reopening of embassies, what else was in there? I mean, there were a couple of other things that were in the joint statement, like reviving these old sort of pre-rupture agreements on security cooperation and a kind of grab bag of everything from cooperation in sports and trade and investment, of course. But to your knowledge, was there anything that’s leaked out that you’ve heard at all anywhere that commits either party, say Iran, to say no longer recognizing the Yemeni Houthi government as Tehran currently does? Or to say like curbing the activities of the, the IRGC or for the Saudis, for example, to back off on, on supporting Salafist groups in other contested areas like in Syria or in Lebanon or in Iraq. Anything?
Tuvia: Yes. So, there have been a couple of reports with some inside information and also some officials from Iran and Saudi Arabia on the record, making some statements or commitments or expectations from the other side. So, just to give some idea, for example, then we get to the Chinese commitment, which is also pretty important. So, on the Saudi side, they’re expected by Iran to stop supporting a station called Iran International, which they allegedly is funded by the Saudi monarchy. And it has been very vocal in its opposition to the Ayatollah regime, and it’s been broadcasted in Iran very successfully. That’s one point of contention. Another is that, and that we signed the joint trilateral statement is non-interference and respecting sovereignty. So, this implicitly means that Iran stop attacking Saudi Arabia itself, because since 2017, it’s been bombarding it with the rockets, it’s been committing terrorist attack, and also using its proxies.
And here, this has not been addressed directly, but more implicitly that Iran will stop support or at least rein the Houthi rebels in Yemen that have been attacking Saudi Arabia and its partners in the region. And we also saw some positive commitments on both sides. So, we had the Saudi Foreign Minister just recently made some tentative commitments to increase investment in Iran and, or at least not completely reject it because the sanctions of the U.S. are still there. And also, on the Iranian side, we saw a minister of energy, I believe, declare that China had agreed to invest in many projects over the next period soon. And now back to the Chinese side of the commitment. Again, these are all reports that are hard to confirm, but according, I think, again, to The Wall Street Journal, they said that China had allowed Iran to tap parts of funds in Chinese banks, which total about 20 billion in frozen funds.
And that’s something that has some precedent with the UAE when it had normalized relations with Iran starting from last year. So, it is very possible. And it could be that China made other commitments off the record, and very astutely so, because when you make commitments off the records, if things go bad, you don’t have to take responsibility. And that’s something we can definitely explore more.
Kaiser: Now, I mean, allowing the Iranians to tap some of the frozen assets, won’t Washington have something to say about that?
Tuvia: Not much. I actually asked that on Twitter, which has been extremely valuable in the last few days with all the different debates going on. And the good folk of Bourse & Bazaar pitched in. And they said that it is in favor of U.S. interests, or at least it is not against U.S. interests, to put it more accurately because the U.S. interest is, as the different U.S. officials have said in the last few days, is to see the lowering of the flames in the Gulf. And if what’s needed is for China to allow Iran to tap into these frozen funds, then the U.S. should allow it. And there’s also, in the last two years since Biden came to office, China has been helping Iran circumvent the sanctions on oil and energy exports on a very large scale. I’m talking to the tune of about $50 billion through ghost armadas making all the way to Chinese coastal provinces and dumping it in small refineries called teapot refineries. And the U.S. did not enforce in sanctions, and we see now almost a return to the pre-2018 sanction level in Iran.
Kaiser: Okay. So, the sort of informal reestablishment of JCPOA levels of…
Tuvia: Yeah. And the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, as it’s more commonly known, that’s something that had had no hope, still no hope of revival as we speak, because of Iran’s export of drones and equipment to Russia and the different pacts it’s been making in helping it kill civilians in Ukraine. So, I wouldn’t hold my breath for the JCPOA to come back to life. And that’s also part of the reason that China was able to capitalize on this opportunity because Iran has been suffering greatly economically. It’d been under extreme pressure internally from protests following the murder of Mahsa Amini in September, a few months ago. And then a ray of hope came from China that couldn’t care much about human rights or about internal process. Quite the opposite. Chinese companies have been helping the Iranian regime in enforcing its authoritarianism and control over its captured population through techno-authoritarian means.
Kaiser: Right. So, speaking of JCPOA and the Iran nuclear deal, as it’s called, are there any terms in the agreement that you’re aware of that touch on the Iranian nuclear program?
Tuvia: No, there are none. And I don’t think they necessarily describe it, but when you read the commentary from all sides, including in China, they all hope, they had hope, including during when Raisi visited Xi Jinping in Beijing, China’s stated commitment to the JCPOA is clear, it hasn’t changed. Again, they identify for us the root causes. And what is the root cause for the failure of the JCPOA? It’s the withdrawal of the U.S. unilaterally in 2018. And Iran is commended for its “laudable efforts” in basically violating all the agreements because, just when Raisi was visiting Beijing, the IAEA, that’s the International Agency for Nuclear Energy Enforcement, so they found Iran had enriched up to 84% uranium, which is 6% short of a nuclear bomb.
And that was going on just as Iran was exporting, again, its drones to Russia and striking deals. And Beijing, under Xi Jinping, just gave them a big prize in normalizing relations between its neighbors. So, it’s bad and good. It’s not all bad, all good. We have this aspect as well.
Kaiser: China obviously, its interest is at stake here, and it’s not hard to guess that oil has a lot to do with it. I mean, China does buy a lot of oil from both countries, and obviously would rather not see that supply disrupted should the two countries escalate from their current state of proxy wars and, as you say, Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia. But in a comment that you made to Deutsche Welle’s William Yang, you suggested that there is a lot more to it than just oil. I suspect there’s a lot more to your answer. And also, maybe you can expand on that a bit. I think you mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative in the region. What else does China have at stake here?
Tuvia: Yeah, sure. So, energy, just to give an idea of the number, China imports about 70% of its oil, 40% of its natural gas, and from 40% to 50% of it comes from the Middle East. So, obviously it’s still extremely important, and it’s going to be so for the next couple of decades, at least, until they finish transitioning to renewable energy. But China is also very interested in trade in the region. It is the largest trading partner for all countries in the Middle East since 2020, the biggest trade partner of the Arab world. Just in the Arab world, it’s about $330 billion in 2021. And also it’s a major investor and growing, and it’s also a major market for China. And back to the Belt and Road Initiative, I usually use this framework of silk roads to understand just how important China has become over the last decade or so.
So, we all heard of the different silk roads, right? Over the years, China’s invested in over 200 major infrastructure projects in the region. And I’m talking about ports and power stations and roads and railroads and bridges, and even entire cities. They’re building a new capital for Egypt after 6,000 years, which is pretty amazing. And the same thing in other countries too, but that’s just the physical concrete and rebar infrastructure. In addition to that, China’s been investing in the infrastructure of the future in all these different crisscrossing silk roads that are all over the region. So, you have the digital Silk Road, and there you have smart cities, and 5 and 6G technologies, and infrastructure for internet, and undersea cable called PEACE, which is pretty fascinating if you look it up.
In health, it has the health Silk Road. And during COVID, China capitalized on this great emergency situation, and it was able to establish multiple manufacturing and redistribution hubs for vaccines. In green Silk Road, the countries in the region are extremely concerned of the Dutch disease that they are too overly reliant on one resource of energy. So, they want to diversify their economy. And the green energy is part of it. Energy transition in China, incidentally, happens to be the largest manufacturer of solar energy and wind energy, and also nuclear energy. And then we have the space Silk road. We went from Belt and Road Initiative just being in China’s periphery all the way to outer space. That’s how ambitious Xi Jinping is. And there too, China’s been helping regional countries in joint satellite launches.
And when the BeiDou, that’s the Chinese equivalent of the GPS. I mean, just this week we had Egypt launch a second satellite in three weeks with China’s help.
Kaiser: Wow.
Tuvia: Yeah, just now, just to show you China is heavily and deeply embedded into the region, but there were only two areas where it hasn’t been that involved. It remained more aloof and skittish even. And that is diplomacy and security.
Kaiser: That’s right.
Tuvia: And here we see a slight change. And that’s something pretty interesting to explore.
Kaiser: Fantastic encapsulation there. That was really, really, really well done. So, we’ve got a sense now of how Washington has responded. We all saw Kirby’s remarks after the announcement. But give us a sense of what this looks like from Tel Aviv or from Jerusalem, or from Brussels, or anywhere else, other capitals where you think there’s been a noteworthy reaction to this news.
Tuvia: Yeah, so let’s start with the U.S. I think it is important. So, up till now, as far as I know, there were only three official remarks. So, one was by Kirby, as you mentioned. The second by State Department spokesperson, Ned Price. And the third, just on the same day, with Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor. And there, you saw that it was a polite agreement that this is “something that we think is positive,” because the U.S. truly had been promoting de-escalation in the region. That was in the U.S. interest. It’s clear. And that’s in the entire world’s interest, including Israel. So, this is not necessarily a terrible thing for the U.S. Of course, we have the GOP and anyone who’s anti-Biden that tried to frame it as the worst thing to ever happen in diplomatic history and the biggest blunder for the U.S., but it’s not as bad as they try to portray it.
And just as Kirby, Sullivan, and Price said, this is really U.S. interest, and if it could lead to the renewal of the nuclear deal, if it could lead to limiting the friction in Iraq and Lebanon and Syria, then why not support it? And if China has been able to do it, all the power to them. And this is significant. It’s really something that shows that China can be a constructive actor for global peace and security. And it’s not like the U.S. is going anywhere. Everyone knows it. The U.S. has bases here. It has long been positioned here. China has no interest to supplant or replace the U.S. as the world police. And they say so themselves. And I don’t think it’s changed. I don’t think it’s changed. And if they want to become more involved in this little hell hole we call home, then all the power to them, and good luck.
Kaiser: Right, right, right. So, you don’t hear a note of sneering in there at all of this sort of, “Hey, it’s your mess now, good luck to you, buddy?”
Tuvia: Yeah, of course. You see that all the time now. In the last 24 hours, there was one piece by Fred Kaplan, which was pretty hilarious, but it was really well put that he said, “welcome to our nightmare.” If China wants to become involved in this graveyard of superpowers, then by all means, be our guests. And here in Israel, the reaction is a bit different. To your question, so Israel wasn’t really a factor, I don’t think, to the negotiations. We’re a tiny country. And the different conflicts between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the relations vis-à-vis China are important in and of themselves without having to involve Israel in any of the negotiations. But here, the immediate reaction was very extreme and sensationalized and politicized because the ongoing judicial reform that Israel is going internally.
So, we begin to see local discourse climate that is really similar to what you see in the U.S., which is extremely binary and bifurcated and partisan and pernicious even. So, every party, the coalition used it to attack the opposition and vice versa. And they said it happened on your watch. It’s the biggest blunder. It’s terrible because it will hamper Israeli attempts to create a coalition with the Sunni world in Saudi Arabia to curb Iran’s hegemony in the region. And of course, some of these arguments do hold because the access for funding and money that Iran would get from this kind of a normalization will help the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to continue their proliferation and extremism. So it’s not undue, the criticism, but again, even for Israel, it’s not as bad as people think. It’s again, not binary.
It’s complex. It’s a major change with great ramifications. But during the same time that the negotiations been going in Beijing, Saudis leaked, again, to Wall Street Journal, props to them, that they’re open to negotiation on diplomatic normalization with Israel given certain terms. And also, like the Americans, Israel also need to welcome lowering of flames regionally. And if this might help to curb Iranian nuclear abilities, then that’s also welcome. And in addition, the UAE also had normalized relations with Iran last year, but that didn’t stop the normalization with Israel. On the contrary, our relationship has been going from strength to strength, and the same hopefully with Saudi Arabia, because this was not a peace agreement. This was basically the beginning of normalizations that will take place in up to two months, and then…
Kaiser: Two months. Right.
Tuvia: God is great, as we say here. The two countries heavily distrust each other. Their conflict has really deep roots. And Iran has not committed to stop its proliferation or hegemony, and its entire mean of operation that is hard baked into the system is ideological proliferation and extremism because it sees it as part of its legitimacy and its ability to sustain the rule of the regime. So, that’s not going away. And because of that, the regional countries will still need American security provisions and also Israeli security solutions. I also think it’s an opportunity for Israel and for the U.S. If China becomes committed, then I think China should own this commitment and try to double down and work on other conflicts here, and even help to curb some of Iran’s other activities in the region that harm China’s own interest. Not Israeli. I’m talking about China.
Just to give you an example. So, back in 2019 on the big attack on Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia, that cut the Saudi production in half at that time. And this made energy prices spike to the point where China had to pay $100 million a day extra because of the Iranian shenanigans. And because of Iran’s attacks on sea-lines of communications, then the insurance is also becoming way more expensive for China. And again, it imports a lot of its energy from the region, and lots of its trade is going through this region. So, this is also for China’s interest, peace and stability. As we said, it’s the approach that is different. I think this is an opportunity first for China and the U.S., if not to cooperate, then at least work in parallel for the peace and security of the region, and definitely not put any sticks in the wheels of the other.
So, if you remember, when the Abraham Accords, that is the normalization between Israel and the four Arab countries had been declared three years ago, then China also responded cautiously, positively, just like the American side today, because it is a positive thing, when you lower the flames where you say that Israel should not be eliminated from the map, and it can normalize relations with its Arab neighbors. That’s good for the region. And hopefully one day with the Palestinians, inshallah, we’ll have peace too in our life. But until then, China should see it as a positive thing for the same reason the U.S. sees the Chinese initiative as a positive thing. And now it’s a great time for regional countries, Israel included, to exercise their agency, and work with China and the U.S. to provide security solutions. Because although they won’t admit it, especially now after balloon-gate, it’s pretty clear, China and the U.S., they need each other here.
They cannot cooperate without the other. The U.S. is the predominant security provider. Because of its security umbrella, China was able to prosper and grow all of its silk roads, as we mentioned before. That’s U.S. security in the making. They’re helping to propagate it. Sure, the U.S. has many problems. Yes, it caused many problems, but it’s the best we could get. And China too, as Jake Sullivan mentioned, it was the only one who could pull this off. He said so, all right, the U.S. could have never done the same thing that China did because China has relatively positive relations with all parties. So, realizing that China and the U.S. have their respective advantages, they should be able to leverage them for the benefit of the entire region, for peace and stability for real. And it is skeptic, given the circumstances and the fraught nature of the relationship, but to me as a Middle Easterner, this is a dream scenario for me.
And because we’re all realist and that’s probably not going to happen, and we are going to see many problems arise, and then China blaming the U.S. as being the root cause of the problems, for example, if Iran does attack Saudi Arabia in the next two month or the Houthi attacks. So, that is very likely to happen, and China will blame the U.S., of course. So, what we could do is try to pull in other external regional players. For example, India, our most recent strategic partner in the region from 2017, and Japan too, and many others that have many stakes here at the region that also need peace and security. And this goes back to the point that regional countries have a lot of agency here unlike the past. And I think the Saudi case is the most glaring example, where MBS-
Kaiser: Well, let’s look at the Saudi case right now. I don’t know if you saw the Wall Street Journal’s former managing editor, Karen House, who has written a couple of books about Saudi Arabia, suggests that what Riyadh really wants here is for the U.S. to offer the security guarantees that the Saudis have been looking for and that they have laid out as a condition for normalizing relations with Israel, right? The idea is that you use this kind of threat of China encroaching on their traditional diplomatic space to try to get the U.S. to make Saudi Arabia a stronger strategic ally to help it develop its own nuclear program, perhaps to make it possible for this new kind of security architecture that’s based on Israel and Saudi Arabia in partnership to shape security for the region.
Now, what do you make of this idea that the Saudis were sort of allowing China to broker this deal, just ultimately to try to bring the U.S. around more quickly to this idea of strategic cornerstone based on Saudi-Israeli normalization?
Tuvia: Yeah, so I totally agree. I think Saudi, out of the three parties, China and Iran, had the most agency in this deal because Iran had been wishing to normalize relations with Saudi for much longer than the two years. And China, they were the platform facilitating it. But Saudi Arabia have made the biggest bet, the biggest wager because it risks its relationship with the U.S., its biggest security guarantor, then it made the biggest risk. So, what was at stake? Why did it wish to do it? What’s the interest? So, I think the first concern for Saudi Arabia was security. As we said, the U.S. was, is still the most important security provider for Saudi Arabia, but it failed on a watch. And the 2019 attack is a good example, but since 2017, Saudi Arabia has been bombarded by Iran. And the 2019 attack when the Trump administration said, “No Americans were killed, so it’s not our problem,” then you failed in doing your job.
And more than an expression of trust in China, it’s just lack of confidence in the U.S. being able to pay attention to this region when it has to focus on Eurasia to deal with Russia and China. And China can also offer a lot of security solutions. I mean, it cannot replace the U.S. outright, and it won’t for the foreseeable future, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have alternatives. And some of the alternatives it offers is weapons that are increasingly better and cheaper and top-notch. The technology, dual-use technology, some as we mentioned already, that is also important, and investments. And with Saudi Arabia wishing to diversify its security commitments and imports, as of now, it imports about 80% of its weapons from the U.S. That’s not a good bargain if you were in Saudi shoes, and they want to diversify it by the end of this decade to as low as 20%.
And they can do it with China’s help. China’s already committed to establishing a drone factory in Saudi Arabia. I think it was last year that it committed to establish a rocket missile factory. So, China can help there too. And this, again, all relates to the security aspect. And for development, of course, that’s also important. China, as we said, offers a lot of development solutions.
Kaiser: Yeah.
Tuvia: And yeah, if you can get that. And I think another point which is important, if we look at it globally, do you recall the incident with Solomon Islands? Was it last year or two years ago?
Kaiser: Of course, yeah.
Tuvia: When Manasseh Sogavare sneezed in China’s general direction, and then all world leaders just rolled up on his doorstep? Remember that?
Kaiser: Yeah, I sure do.
Tuvia: Yeah. So, here you have a much, arguably, much more important country, major energy supplier of the world pulling off a successful Solomon Islands or, as Chinese analysts describe it, they play the China card. And when they deal with China, they play the U.S. card. And this way, they are hedging, or not hedging, that’s a negative term, they are leveraging on the many possibilities and opportunities that both major powers are providing them, and why not if they can afford it.
Kaiser: So, you’ve described this as China having pushed on an open door, and I think that’s an excellent description of it. But it’s one of those things that reminds one of how contingent history really is. This door would not have been… Well, let’s say there might have been somebody standing in the way of China reaching that door in the form of the United States had it not been for things like the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. I mean, and Biden sort of promising to turn Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman into a…
Tuvia: Pariah.
Kaiser: … into a pariah state. Right. So, did Khashoggi’s murder open up this opportunity for Beijing? I think it’s fair to say that’s been in a lot of the analysis.
Tuvia: Yes. I think that’s one point, but it’s part of the greater story that Saudi Arabia has been losing faith in the U.S. Because U.S.-Saudi relations go back at least 80 years and seen as strategic for at least 50. And this mutual dependence has been greatly beneficial to both countries. And they might dislike the nature of the relationship at different points throughout history, but they need each other. And their dealing has been pretty successful for all parties involved. But the recent blunders under the Biden administration, and you mentioned the Khashoggi murder. And again, it’s not that it’s unjustified or incorrect, it is true, but still, the diplomatic acumen shown by the White House has been pretty miserable if you considered the situation.
And Biden’s July visit last year to Saudi Arabia where he fist bumped a king of a country he visited, that’s not something you do anywhere in the world, let alone in the Middle East, where honor and royalty are very important symbolically. And China is also a country that attaches much importance to symbolism, and it knows how to play the game. And when it deals with regional countries, then it rolls out the red carpet and gives a 21-gun salute. And these are definitely factors that are going through Saudi Arabia’s head. That the U.S. self-declared that it’s going to position human rights on top of its diplomatic agenda, which is fine for them, but they’ve been criticizing and lecturing, as they speak, as they talk about it, the regional countries, about their internal affairs as they see it.
On the other hand, you have another great power that doesn’t lecture, that doesn’t have any strings attached allegedly, except for recognizing its core interests and its violations of human rights in Xinjiang. But we have our own Muslims to take care of. So, that’s something that is definitely considered. Yeah.
Kaiser: Right. Let’s look quickly at the Iranian perspective on this. I mean, so what are some of the factors that made the Mullahs finally amenable to this normalization? I mean, we’ve talked about, for example, these ongoing protests, the domestic situation that’s happened now for quite a… It’s petering out now, apparently, but it was very, very bad for the last six months. My untutored guess, though, is this has something to do with where Iran is right now in their enrichment of uranium, in their weapons program. It’s far enough along now that they’re worried about Israel actually taking action. And they think that by improving ties with Saudi Arabia, this decreases the odds of precipitous action by Israel, in other words, bombing nuclear facilities.
Tuvia: Yes. That is most likely was a concern before reaching this rapprochement just before the Beijing breakthrough had been announced, then the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, visited Israel. And a little before that we had the biggest joint drill between Israel and the United States, likely simulating attacks in Iran. And Israel too have been pretty clear about the threat that it senses from Iran reaching a nuclear weapon. And rightfully so, because their leader has been saying for decades, they want to obliterate the country. And it is seen as existential threat for real, not like the John Wayne Committee in the U.S. House, but a real existential threat to our security. So, this is definitely something. And we also touched on the JCPOA that it has absolutely no means of returning, especially seeing Iran providing weapons to Russia.
And the brutal protests in Iran internally, and the currency crisis they’ve been dealing with, with high inflation that reaches as high as 50% last time I checked.
Kaiser: Wow.
Tuvia: Yeah. And also, they have a lot of economic opportunities in dealing with Saudi Arabia, and because both of them are members of OPEC, the energy organization, and matching the prices between them, coordinating it could benefit both sides. And also, there’s a lot of potential for untapped investments since Iran had been disconnected from the global economy for so long. Same goes for China, who also sees this potential in Iran.
Kaiser: So, I know that this isn’t your area specifically, Tuvia, but I do want to ask you about the implications for the Ukraine War and China’s stated desire to push for a negotiated settlement to end that conflict. It’s now 13 months ago. Expectations in the West are not high, and there’s an understandable amount of cynicism about the Chinese “proposal,” this framework that they published just a couple of weeks ago. Do you have some thoughts on this?
Tuvia: Yeah, I have some thoughts. I did write about the 12-point peace plan of China, and Sasha Gabuev have also wrote beautifully on it as well. And I encourage people to read it. And you saw, as the Hebrew expression goes, the appetite increases when the food is served. So, with this breakthrough, China has more impetus, more desire to get involved in other hotspot regions in the world. Because of the success story in the past just a week ago when it made all these forgettable proposals for peace for all these different regions of the world, it was risible, just like the 12-point plan, it still is. Offers no real roadmap and no real solutions, and I don’t want to even speak about China’s pro-Russian neutrality, as you put it last year. And now with this breakthrough, China is taken more seriously.
People actually listen, and that’s why they also offer to host another summit between Iran and GCC countries, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. And just immediately after the success, then Xi Jinping is planning to visit Moscow, his best friend Putin. For the first time, he’s going to call President Volodymyr Zelensky. And that may lead to some other developments, but it remains to be seen. As for China’s role in solving other hotspots, then I remain dubious because again, the conditions that have allowed the recent breakthrough between Iran and Saudi Arabia are very particular. All the stars aligned perfectly, and China was able to find the window of opportunity. The same conditions don’t exist, of course, in other conflicts in the world, not just Ukraine, but even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that had been flouted again because of the success and other contentious areas.
And our friend, Dr. Cobus van Staden, I asked them about Africa, and he said, too, China’s not going to get involved. It doesn’t want to get its hands dirty in regional problems. It doesn’t want to be police, and it doesn’t think it’ll succeed, and it’s not interested in succeeding. It has enough on his plate
Kaiser: Right. Tuvia, your work focuses so much on China’s relationship with Israel. So, I would definitely be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to ask you about that evolving relationship. Can you give us just an overview of where that relationship has come from and where it now appears to be headed, and what the major opportunities and obstacles both sides see in the furtherance of that relationship?
Tuvia: Sure, so-
Kaiser: I know that’s a big ask.
Tuvia: It is a big ask, but I’ll keep it short and sweet. So, last year, we marked the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations. Before that, during the Maoist high tide of revolution, Israel was seen as a colonial state. Ironically, before the Bandung Conference of ‘56, it was Israel fighting colonialism, and the Arabs were the colonists. But you do good math and you see Israel, the tiny Jewish country, and then you got all the Arab world and the Muslim world, and you make your own choice. And they chose the Arab world, which is fine. In the ‘90s, after having surreptitious under the table connections, especially Israel selling weapons to China, with the U.S. blessing, by the way, after the Vietnam War, then we established relationship. And from weapons, after 10 years, the U.S. began to become concerned. We had the third Taiwan crisis in the ‘90s, and the Tiananmen, of course, massacre.
And then the U.S. pulled the plug on Israel selling weapons and security export, including dual use. From there, it kind of diversified into more civilian users like agriculture and health and education. And in the last decade when Netanyahu, then Prime Minister, visited Beijing, the Israeli government passed a decision that recognizes three of the BRIC countries, and China most prominently as areas of strategic focus, like we need to develop our relationship with them and diversify and not to put all our eggs in one basket, was during the fraught Obama-Netanyahu relationship between the U.S. and Israel. And our relationship focused instead on innovation and cooperation. And we even established a very special relationship called Comprehensive Innovation Cooperation unlike the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership China has with other regional countries.
Now we are reaching another stage where the “honeymoon is over.” Because the U.S., again, doesn’t want to see Israeli technology being exported to China, especially now under the Biden administration. And this puts a big question mark on the future of our bilateral relationship, which is really important to both sides, most important to Israel, where China is slowly becoming its greatest trade partner. It’s biggest, even greater than the U.S., and we are close to signing a free-trade agreement. And Israel has been pressured many times by the U.S. administration, going all the way up to the president, telling it to disengage from China. But Israel has no interest to make China an enemy. It doesn’t see it as such. It wants to maintain good ties. It’s unhappy with its biased policy on the Palestinians and the conflict, but still, it recognizes it’s economic importance, for the same reason the U.S. has been continuing to invest and trade with China. So, yeah.
Kaiser: Excellent. Excellent. Short and sweet indeed. I’m curious, because as we all know, Israel right now is in the throes of its own domestic crisis over the proposed changes to the Supreme Court. Does partisanship, I mean, does the sort of loose divide between the conservative Likud and its allies and the Labor Party, does that fall down on different sides of the attitude toward China?
Tuvia: So, China does not exist in the political lexicon of Israel. Unlike the fraught relationship between China and the U.S. where it’s all over the agenda, and I’m sure we are going to get to a China-bashing-palooza in the next year with the coming election. But in Israel, we had, not one, we had like five different elections in four years. And China not once was mentioned on the agenda because we have enough on our plate as it is. Here, China is relatively a newcomer to the region. In the U.S., we’re entering the season of China-bashing-palooza before the general election. And in Israel, we had five elections in the last four years, and not once, yeah, it’s hard to follow, was China mentioned because Israel is less interested in East Asia in general, and it is a relative newcomer. And we also have a lot on our plate. We don’t have the knowledge infrastructure understanding of China, of course, and other East Asian countries.
It’s improving, and our diplomats are also very astute observers, but they’re still minimal. And journalists too, we don’t have journalists even stationed in China, not because they kicked any out, because no one went there in the first place. That’s why-
Kaiser: We do have you and you have Alexander Pevzner, who are just fantastic resources, and people whose writings I read eagerly. You’ve both guested before on the China Global South Podcast.
Tuvia: Yeah. I really am a small fry. I stand on the shoulder of giants here. Luckily in Israel, just here in my vicinity, we have some of the brightest minds on China, for real, in the world. Like Professor Yuri Pines, who was my supervisor, and I helped him in teaching, and Professor Vera Schwarcz, Andrew Plaks. We have some really smart Professor Yitzhak Shichor, of course, who’s the Dean of China Middle East relations. He wrote the first book on it. I have it here, a dusty copy from the ‘70s. And I’m just lucky to be part of this team. And I’m also part of the Israel-China Policy Center, where I work with close to a dozen really bright minds that also focus on China. And incidentally, it’s the biggest program in the INSS despite being focused usually on the Middle East. So, China is becoming more interesting and more relevant to Israel. And we’re trying to make other people and our fellow countrymen realize it the sooner the better.
Kaiser: That’s fantastic. Before I let you go, I did want to mention that you had featured this really interesting conversation with retired PLA Colonel Zhou Bo, on the Institute for National Security Studies podcast. I think listeners should definitely go check out that. But maybe first you could give our Sinica audience some of the highlights from that conversation, and maybe tell us who Zhou Bo was. I mean, many of us have seen him giving interviews on the sidelines at the Munich Security Conference, and were probably quite taken by how straight talking and articulate he was.
Tuvia: Yeah. So, Zhou Bo is a very familiar face to anyone that’s been observing China, and because he does take interviews, his English is immaculate, and he used to be a senior colonel in the PLA. And he has a major in English and masters in Cambridge, working on security, and he has some really interesting thoughts to share. And some of them are contentious and not something that people usually hear from China because he’s unusually forthright about it and unapologetic either. Think of other Chinese scholars that we know that talk in English. He has a lot more acumen and better analysis ability, but he also closely follows the Party line despite not being affiliated officially with anyone. He’s now a researcher with Tsinghua. And that’s why it’s really great talking to him and listening to him because he both provides this individual angle and also very contentious points of view about the most hot topics in the world, like the war in Ukraine.
Kaiser: And what were some of the things that he said during your interview with him that we should point our listeners to?
Tuvia: I’d like to focus on the positive aspects. So, we did talk about China’s new security architecture for the Middle East. And again, it happened before the announcement in Beijing. It’s based on an article I wrote for the Atlantic Council with the same topic, and this name, The New Security Architecture for the Middle East, that’s a Chinese name, a big plan they had unveiled last year in September. And that’s why I wanted to ask him, the most important question I wanted to ask is what we talked about here — can China and the U.S., ironically, out of all places, this region that has been the eternal arena for great power competition, could they lay down their swords, and as one analyst I translated this week said, beat them into plow shares and maybe cooperate for the peace and security of the region?
And he says that he thinks it’s likely, or at least he doesn’t reject it outright. And he gave some precedents where China and the U.S. had cooperated in the past on security, even here in the JCPOA when it was first reached in 2015, then it was through China’s help. It didn’t lead it just like it did this time, but it did facilitate the talks. Hua Liming, who’s a former diplomat, he helped to lubricate everything China does — did have carrots even then over Iran. And China and the U.S. also had coopered on counter piracy missions. So, it’s not completely detached. And also in the Six-Party talks with North Korea, it’s another example he gave. I still remain skeptical, unfortunately. I mean, I would love to see China and the U.S. cooperate here.
I’d like to emphasize this positive note, even from him, I have other Chinese scholars on record saying the same thing that, “Why not? Why here in the Middle East can’t China and the U.S. cooperate, make this our little kingdom of heaven?
Kaiser: I’d like to end on that positive note as well. Thank you so much, Tuvia Gering, for taking the time to join me and for sharing so many great insights and such really good lucid thinking. Let’s move on to recommendations. Before we do that, just a very quick reminder that the Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project. And if you like the work that we do with Sinica, with the other shows in the network, including, as we’ve mentioned several times now, the China and Africa Podcast, and the China Global South Podcast, then please, by all means, the best thing you can do is subscribe to our access subscription service where you’ll get our daily newsletter, as well as access to all of the writing on our website. You also get this podcast early in the week on Mondays typically rather than on Thursdays.
All right, Tuvia, let’s start with you for recommendations. What do you have for us? You’ve already made some excellent recommendations. Well, let’s see which one you have?
Tuvia: Oh, yeah. Did you listen to The Smile?
Kaiser: Yeah.
Tuvia: Yeah. So, everyone knows Thom Yorke, so I’m not going to recommend him. I don’t want to be a normie. I’m going to go full hipster and recommend my favorite all-time band, and they’re my favorite because, you know, I’m too young to have enjoyed Frank Zappa, and I’m too old to enjoy the AI generated Robocop 3000 music of the future, but I’m just in the right age to enjoy the best and most prolific and musically engaging band out there called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard from the land down under. And just to give you an idea-
Kaiser: Oh man, I’ve heard them. They’re amazing.
Tuvia: Oh, you know them. Awesome. By prolific, I mean, last year they released in one month, three albums. They released five albums all throughout the year. And it’s not like they released 30 songs and then one song is okay. It’s like every single song is amazing. It’s gold. And the musicality of them is like, every album is different. Every album is their different musical take, and lyrically too. And I just recommend, if you’re starting, start with Omnium Gatherum. It’s a double album, and then go to their kind of futuristic pop called Butterfly 3000, which has a lot of Chinese influences. One song is almost a Zhuangzi; incidentally they didn’t mean it, but it’s basically the Zhuangzi, which is awesome. So you’re welcome. And then the Fishing for Fishes. And if you are into metal, try the Infesting the Rat Nest. It’s just amazing band. And just to give…
Kaiser: Yeah, they’re really Versatile
Tuvia: … a professional, just a shout out to another friend and mentor, Jonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim, they released a book about China, Asian perspective on Gulf security, which is really relevant to our topic of discussion today. So, I want to recommend their new book to the readers, to the listeners.
Kaiser: Fantastic. Thanks so much for those recommendations. Mine, I’m just going to go with something, and because in preparation for this, and thinking about China in the Middle East, I was remembering when I was, I think it was a junior or senior in college, I took a class from Ira Lapidus at Berkeley and read one of the sort of foundational English language textbooks about Islam. It’s called The Venture of Islam by Marshall G. S. Hodgson. And I realized I probably still had a copy. And so, my bookshelf, unfortunately, is really over-stacked, so it was in the back, behind other more recently paged through books, leaf-through books. So, pulled it out and looked at it, and then there it was with my marginal notes and everything. But Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, I think it still holds up as a very good introductory text for the Islamic world. Ira Lapidus, himself, he wrote a bunch of books, including Muslim Cities in the Late Middle Ages, and really, really good stuff. So, thanks once again, Tuvia, what a pleasure it was to have you.
Tuvia: Pleasure all mine, really.
Kaiser: Okay, great. Well, I look forward to having you back on because obviously there are so many things, so many things that we can talk about. And I thank you for your time.
Tuvia: Thank you.
Kaiser: The Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project and is a proud part of the Sinica Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be delighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com or just give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts as this really does help people discover the show. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook at @thechinaproj, and be sure to check out all the shows in the Sinica Network. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.
