Assuming a role that once belonged to the United States, China has increasingly sought to exert influence in world geopolitics by mediating agreements to end hostilities between other countries.
The great Chinese triumph so far was the announcement, made in March, of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia with the mediation of Beijing, after seven years of severed ties between the two countries.
But China doesn’t want to stop there. Beijing suggested a peace plan to end the war between Ukraine and Russia and last week the dictator Xi Jinping spoke for the first time since the beginning of the conflict with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Earlier, Western leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron had urged China to use its influence with Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Another, much older conflict has become the target of Beijing’s diplomatic overtures. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been in contact with senior Israeli and Palestinian officials with a view to starting peace talks and implementing the two-state solution in the region.
In talks with Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers Eli Cohen and Riyad Al-Maliki, respectively, Qin argued that China is “ready to facilitate” these talks.
In Yemen, China’s local chargé d’affaires, Shao Zheng, has been holding meetings with members of the country’s Presidential Leadership Council to negotiate an end to the civil war that started in 2015. In this case, the mediation of the Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement helps Beijing as the two countries wage a proxy war in Yemen.
The Yemen talks make it clear that China’s goal is not just to gain soft power by brokering peace talks.
In a statement released in April, the Chinese embassy in Yemen pointed out that the country at war “has an enormous development potential waiting to be explored” and that China hopes to be able to “play an important role in the post-war reconstruction of Yemen and in economic development”. In other words: he has an eye on the business that can be generated with the attainment of peace.
Human rights
It is ironic that a country accused of genocide within its borders (against the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang) and which has been threatening to invade a neighboring island (Taiwan) is seeking to play the role of mediator of world peace, but, specifically in the case of the Iran-Saudi Arabia deal, this poor track record even helped.
China took advantage of America’s distancing from Tehran (after the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal signed in 2015, under the Obama administration) and Riyadh (after Joe Biden’s criticism of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi), two regimes who, like Beijing, have a disgraceful human rights record.
“China is not concerned with holding other governments to account for human rights guidelines. This is even present in the trilateral note [divulgada em março], which speaks of respect for sovereignty and ‘non-interference in internal affairs’. This can apply to a myriad of topics, including arresting opponents, cracking down on protests and the like. Bearing in mind that Iran is the country that most executes people in the world, and Saudi Arabia occupies the third place in the ranking, both countries suffering international pressure for this”, highlighted historian Filipe Figueiredo, columnist for People’s Gazette.
In a recent article for the South Korean newspaper The Korea Herald, Wang Son-taek, director of the Center for Global Policies at the Hampyeong Peace Institute, highlighted that the diplomatic decadence of the United States, according to him, started in the government of George W. Bush (2001-2009), boosts other powers, with values different from those of the United States.
“If the strategy [americana] for the Indo-Pacific region is not revised, China’s presence and Russia’s provocations will only increase. Major middle powers in Asia, Africa and the Americas will move more towards China and Russia. Some developed countries in Europe and Asia will express more dissatisfaction with the US leadership,” she explained.
no credibility
It remains to be seen whether China will have the strength to continue mediating agreements around the world – a role for which credibility is a decisive ingredient.
Tuvia Gering, an expert on China-Middle East relations at the Israel Institute for National Security Studies, said in an interview with DW that China saw “an opportunity” in the Iran-Saudi Arabia deal and was “just the right player at the right time”. .
However, being seen as a balanced mediator in other conflicts will be more difficult. After the conversation between Xi and Zelensky last week, NATO recalled that Beijing continues without condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the partnership between China and Russia (deepened since the beginning of the war) had been reaffirmed with a visit by the dictator to the capital Russian in March.
Gering pointed out that Israel views Chinese moves towards negotiations with the Palestinians with the same skepticism that NATO maintains regarding Beijing’s role in the war in Ukraine.
“China may see itself as a balanced power for all parties, but Israel does not share that sentiment. They see China as a biased and completely cynical player in the region, which has no interest in resolving this conflict. It’s just China marking some diplomatic and geopolitical points,” said the expert.
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