Syria's revolution and China

I haven’t focused much on Syria over the years because there wasn’t much to focus on for a China watcher. China supported the Assad regime with 8 vetoes in the UN, which is unusual in that it has only used the veto 16 times ever. This cost the PRC reputationally; there were Arab governments that were deeply unhappy about China’s support for Assad. And it wasn’t like China got a lot from its relationship with Syria in material terms. Despite Assad’s visit to China in September 2023 when he and Xi announced a strategic partnership agreement, despite Assad’s pledge to join the BRI, there has been no Chinese investment in Syria and no major contracts for Chinese firms there since 2010. Trade has been miniscule. So why back Assad?

The big issue is the CCP’s concern with political revolution, an event that brought them into power. Domestic pressures in China drive a lot of political decisions, and the spread of revolutions in the Arab world in 2011 was alarming for the Party. Tensions in Tibet and Xinjiang were significant, and in the late Hu Jintao years the widespread corruption of the Party resulted in hundreds of ‘mass incidents’ every day - averaging 500/day in 2010. The last thing the CCP wanted was its own population getting inspired by the Arab Spring.

In the case of Syria, the resulting war was especially troubling since thousands of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from western China, traveled to Syria to fight alongside al-Qaida against the Syrian government. One Uighur fighter, quoted in this AP report, showed why the war mattered to the CCP:

“We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was,” said Ali, who would only give his first name out of a fear of reprisals against his family back home. “We just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China.”

So the China-Syria relationship has been driven more by shared threats than opportunities. I suspect images of Assad in Beijing with Xi anger a lot of Syrians who will associate governments in Russia, Iran and China with the government that brutalized them.

Speaking of Russia and Iran, their inability to protect Assad’s government underscores how much weaker they’ve become, and has to be a major concern for the PRC. So much has gone into these relationships for China, and I would imagine a lot of Chinese citizens are upset that their country’s closest partners are increasingly isolated outcasts. Throughout the Reform Era China was on a trajectory of stronger ties to advanced economies. Companies were encouraged to partner with the West. Students were encouraged to go to top universities. Officials built strong relationships with their counterparts around the world. Over the past 11 years that has changed, and the futures Chinese people were building changed as well. They have to be frustrated that their government has staked so much to ties with Russia and Iran.

I’ll post a more conventional newsletter tomorrow if all goes according to plan. For now, some stories and articles about the China-Syria relationship that will provide context for you.

Exploiting China's Rise: Syria's Strategic Narrative and China's Participation in Middle Eastern Politics - Andrea Ghiselli and Mohamed Alsudairi, Global Policy (2022), 14(1). Andrea and Mohamed also have a case study on China-Syria in an excellent forthcoming book with the Cambridge Elements series that I was fortunate to have an early read. This article is open access, so no paywall to dodge.

Abstract: China's rise has fuelled much speculation about its potential involvement in regional crises across the world, and especially in the Middle East. In this debate, the agency of local actors is often ignored, and China is described as actively pursuing a long-term strategy to expand its influence at the expense of the United States. Taking the Syrian civil war as a case study, this study challenges, if not wholly overturns, this mainstream analysis. Through the comparative juxtaposition of Syrian official discourse and Chinese actions, it finds that the Syrian state articulates a strategic narrative which significantly overstates its relationship with China for domestic and foreign policy reasons. This narrative, which depicts China as a supporter of an anti-American regional coalition that also includes Iran and its allies, has been picked up by Western observers, thereby creating a distorted image of China's level of engagement in Syria and the region more broadly. Accordingly, this paper also prompts important considerations about the dynamics of China's presence with the Middle East and how scholars should study it.

China's Post-Syria Quandary - The Long Shadow of Assad's Ousting on China- Coffee in the Desert. Jesse Marks wrote about the corner Beijing has painted itself into. You should be subscribing to his Substack if you’re not already.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad represents a watershed moment for the Middle East and a critical test for China’s foreign policy. Having invested significant political capital in supporting the Assad regime and framing its normalization with the Arab League as evidence of the success of its diplomatic model [See my comments on the Chinese 2024 report in the implementation of GRI], China now risks being sidelined in Syria's post-Assad landscape. This situation forces Beijing to reconcile its principles of non-interference and regime stability with the need for pragmatism in adapting to new political realities.

Chinese Experts Look at the Restart of Hostilities in Syria - ChinaMed Project. Another Substack you should be reading. The team at ChinaMed regularly puts together posts looking at narratives about the Middle East in China, translating expert analysis:

However, with the rebel advance shattering the notion that Bashar al-Assad has secured victory in the civil war, this issue of the ChinaMed Observer explores Chinese commentators and experts’ initial reactions to the unfolding events in Syria. Our analysis reveals an ongoing debate among Chinese observers about whether the Syrian government can hold, but also a broad agreement on the importance of regional dynamics. A clear preference has emerged for viewing the Assad regime’s troubles through the lens of the relative power of regional actors, particularly Iran, Russia and Turkey. Moreover, the resumption of hostilities in Syria is also examined in terms of its regional implications, especially its potential to exacerbate the fragile ceasefire in Lebanon, thereby contributing significantly to broader instability in the Middle East.

Not China-related, but recommended if you need to get up to speed on Syria.

Wrestling With Syria's War - Marc Lynch’s Abu Aardvark MENA Academy.

The Backstory Behind the Fall of Aleppo - Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss in New Lines Magazine.

The Fall of Assad’s Syria - Rania Abouzeid in The New Yorker