<\/strong>Islamist militancy by detaining ethnic Uyghurs en masse in its far western region of Xinjiang, has not explicitly condemned Hamas for its terror attacks on Israel \u2013 neither has Russia, which had its own history of suppressing political Islam within its own borders. <\/p>\n But both have vocally criticized Israel for its retaliation to the Hamas attacks. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s foreign minister accused Israel of going \u201cbeyond the scope of self-defense,\u201d while Russia\u2019s UN envoy compared Israel\u2019s relentless shelling of Hamas-controlled Gaza to the brutal siege of Leningrad during World War II. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a huge difference between the American approach and the Chinese and Russian stance right now,\u201d said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor of international relations at Singapore\u2019s Nanyang Technological University. <\/p>\n
Russian and Chinese state media have already blamed US policy for the escalating conflict, and as the situation in Gaza deteriorates, Beijing and Moscow will only become even more critical of the US approach, Li said. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s pro-Palestinian stance dates back decades and is rooted in revolutionary ideology. In the era of Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China, Beijing armed and trained Palestinian militant groups as part of its Cold War support for national liberation movements. <\/p>\n
After the country\u2019s reform and opening following Mao\u2019s death in 1976, however, China adopted a more pragmatic foreign policy. While it continued to offer political support for the Palestinian cause and became one of the first countries to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state in 1988, Beijing also warmed to Israel and established formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in 1992. <\/p>\n
Over the past decade, Chinese investment and trade with Israel skyrocketed, especially in the technology sector. In 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed his country and China as a \u201cmarriage made in heaven.\u201d <\/p>\n
Throughout their economic cooperation, however, China has upheld its political support for the Palestinians, voting in favor of them and against Israel at the United Nations whenever conflicts flared. <\/p>\n
Part of that is due to pragmatic interests. <\/p>\n
About half of China\u2019s oil imports come from Arab states, which also account for more than 20 votes at the UN \u2013 potentially helpful for Beijing when it comes to issues like defending its treatment of Uyghurs. <\/p>\n
\u201cChina\u2019s view of the Middle East is that Israel is never going to split from the US side, and that means being critical to Israel is going to curry favor with a large bloc of Arab countries,\u201d said the Atlantic Council\u2019s Fulton. <\/p>\n
It is not the first time China has expressed an interest in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. <\/p>\n
Beijing\u2019s aspirations to be a mediator started as early as the 2000s, but remained largely symbolic. China did put forward several vague proposals and invited politically insignificant Palestinian and Israeli figures for talks in Beijing \u2013 but those efforts did not lead anywhere. <\/p>\n
This time around, experts do not expect the result to be much different, despite China\u2019s recent success in brokering a rapprochement between rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia. <\/p>\n
While China\u2019s involvement in the Middle East has grown, its interests there remain primarily economic \u2013 and its relations with regional players largely transactional, experts say. <\/p>\n
\u201cBeijing possesses little leverage over Hamas and has limited historical involvement in the Arab-Israel conflict. By distancing itself from Israel after the terrorist attack, Beijing has further undermined its influence in Tel Aviv,\u201d said Zhao Tong, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. <\/p>\n
It also remains to be seen whether China will be willing or able to leverage its close relationship with Iran \u2013 which funds and arms both Hamas and <\/strong>Lebanese militant group <\/strong>Hezbollah \u2013 to deescalate the war and prevent it from spilling over into a broader conflict. <\/p>\n \u201cI think China certainly is prevailing on Tehran to exercise restraint,\u201d said Vakil with Chatham House. \u201cI personally think the Iranians intend to exercise restraint unless things get out of hand. I don\u2019t think that Iran wants to be involved in a broader regional conflict \u2013 so their interests are aligned.\u201d <\/p>\n
But while Arab countries may give Zhai a warm reception, few would take Beijing\u2019s peace proposals seriously, Vakil said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that Middle Eastern states are looking to China to come in and build a diplomatic process (for peacemaking). They are aware of the limitations of what China has on offer,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s very little China can do beyond trying to showcase diplomacy. China doesn\u2019t have the ability to manage the conflict or deescalate this conflict.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Days after the United States\u2019 shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, which culminated in President Joe Biden\u2019s historic wartime visit to Israel, China has started its own diplomatic hustling in a region teetering on the brink of a wider conflict. Zhai Jun, Beijing\u2019s special envoy to the Middle East, has embarked on a whirlwind tour <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}