Closing tabs on the browser: Saudi ETFs, a MENA report from CICIR, Global South essay in Quishi, a port in Georgia, US policy makers on China.
I’m having a quiet morning in beautiful Nova Scotia, reading through some of the many open tabs on my browser while waiting for the Blue Jays - Tigers game. A few things that might be of interest:
China Investors’ Newest Craze: Saudi Stocks - Wall Street Journal. Interesting article about the surge in Chinese investors buying up Saudi ETFs. With Chinese equity markets taking a beating there’s an appetite for investing overseas, and geopolitical tensions with the US and Europe combined with momentum in China-Middle East ties makes investments in the Kingdom attractive:
Two exchange-traded funds focused on big Saudi companies like Aramco and Saudi National Bank gained as much as 30% over their first three days of trade after launching this week, briefly trading at premiums of 20% over their net asset values, according to Chinese market-data provider Wind.
Middle East Seeks Development amid Turmoil - CICIR Task Force. This week I posted a translation of content from China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, or CICIR. It publishes a journal, Contemporary International Relations, that gives you a sense of the orthodox thinking in Chinese IR. This article was published earlier this year and mostly provides an overview of regional trends. The last section, ‘Cooperation between China and the Middle East has entered a new stage’, is worth a quick read. One detail that jumped out:
In the first three quarters of 2023, the volume of trade between China and the Middle East reached $296.2 billion, for 9.6% of China’s total foreign trade.
Nearly 10% is more than I would have guessed…
Riding the Tide of History: Working Together to Boost Solidarity and Cooperation Among the Global South - Liu Jianchao in Quishi. Quishi is the CCP’s official news/theory journal and a useful source for tracking directions in official thinking in Beijing. This article isn’t specific to the Middle East but gives a good overview of how China is positioning itself as a leading voice for developing countries, or the Global South, while sharpening its attack on the West in general and the US in particular. Given Chinese narratives about the Israel-Hamas war, you can put the pieces together pretty easily; Beijing uses its rhetorical support for Palestine as a means of getting a broader Arab acceptance of Chinese preferences for global governance. I wrote about this in a report last year for Atlantic Council along with Michael Schuman and Tuvia Gering: How Beijing’s newest global initiatives seek to remake the world order.
If you’re not familiar with Quishi, it’s worth reading to check the weather vane in Beijing. From Liu’s article:
With global change on a scale unseen in a century picking up pace and risks and challenges emerging in a constant stream, the awakening of Global South countries is gathering momentum. Amid growing dissatisfaction with the so-called “rules-based international order” championed and touted by Western countries, there is an increasing sense of urgency among the Global South to change this unequal international order and uphold international fairness and justice. Time and again, President Xi has appealed for true multilateralism and a more just and equitable international order. He has also affirmed China’s full support for increasing the representation and say of developing countries in the international governance system, declaring that “China’s vote in the United Nations will always belong to developing countries.”
Georgia’s Anaklia Port and PRC Infrastructure Strategy - Lea Thome in China Brief. The Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief is another site you should be regularly checking out. This article is especially interesting for me since I was recently at a workshop on Chinese overseas investments in ports and affiliated infrastructure, and also because I love visiting Georgia and have been thinking about an article on the BRI in the South Caucasus. China Communications Construction Company won a bid to develop a new deep-sea port of Anaklia, located in western Georgia on the Black Sea, and has a 49% stake in the port. During last month’s visit to China from the Turkish foreign minister I mentioned the Middle Corridor Initiative, a land route connecting Europe and Asia; this port will be part of this corridor.
Broken Engagement - Bob Davis at The Wire China. I’m a big fan of The Wire China, a fantastic online magazine, and one of the regular features I’ve enjoyed is Davis’ interviews with China-focused US policymakers. This article gives his big-picture takeaway from the series. It’s worth reading, and I recommend you go through the interviews as well - great stuff. And really, subscribe to The Wire China.
Launching the series, I had hoped the hour-long interviews I planned to conduct with top U.S. officials during the past six presidential administrations would help readers (and me) understand how the U.S. plotted China policy, the shift over the years from a warm embrace between the two nations to a frigid standoff, and the thinking and motivation of American decision-makers. I was looking for a way to understand the arc of U.S.-China relations.
I had reported on the American response to China since the 1990s for the Wall Street Journal and wanted to get better insight into the history I had covered and the people who made it. As a reporter, I sought to draw out the interviewees and get them to explain their thinking and not to try to convince them of my views. I suppose I had long been caught up with the possibilities of engagement, as China exploded on to the global scene. In the years I was based in China, 2011 to 2014, the notion of “Chimerica” — a deep embrace between the two nations helping to create a better world — still seemed possible, though the prospects were quickly fading.
The interviews became a kind of extended conversation between generations of government China hands. Looking over the interviews, often the sharpest disagreements weren’t between Republicans and Democrats, as I had expected. Rather, the dividing line was around 2016, after Xi Jinping entrenched his power as China’s leader and Donald Trump won the presidency. Post 2016, Washington officials, whatever their political affiliation, invariably were more disillusioned with China than their pre-Xi/Trump predecessors.
Over the past two years, I have interviewed a Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi), two Defense secretaries (Robert Gates and Ash Carter), one Secretary of State (Mike Pompeo), two Treasury secretaries (Larry Summers and Robert Rubin), two National Security Advisors (Steven Hadley and Robert O’Brien), a National Security Agency director (Mike Rogers), three U.S. Trade Representatives (Barshefsky, Robert Zoellick and Michael Froman), three ambassadors (Nick Burns, Gary Locke and Rahm Emanuel), and an assortment of deputy cabinet officers and other government officials deeply involved in China policy (Pottinger and Kurt Campbell, among others).