Welcome to the China-MENA Newsletter

Welcome to the China-MENA Newsletter! I’m Jonathan Fulton, an associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and a senior nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. My research focuses on China’s relation’s with countries of the Middle East, looking mostly at the Gulf countries. I also work on Middle East international relations, Asia-Middle East relations, and geopolitics in general. I’ve lived in the UAE since 2006 and have been studying China’s growing presence here for nearly 20 years. My PhD dissertation was on China-GCC relations; this became my first book. Since then I’ve published widely on these topics, including a book on Asian security and the Gulf, and the Routledge Handbook on China - Middle East Relations, a book I edited that includes contributions from 26 experts on nearly every facet of China-MENA that we could cover. I also host The China-MENA Podcast for the Atlantic Council, a show that’s just wrapping up its second season.

I plan for this newsletter to be a regularly updated look at trends in China’s engagement in the Middle East. I’ll also be writing about trends in the region that are shaping events as well as Asian countries’ growing presences in MENA. For the time being I’ll be sharing news sprinkled with analysis. I’ll be adding book reviews, sharing translations of Chinese analysis on the Middle East, and hopefully interviews with other folks working on the subject. For now I’m making it an open access newsletter, but the plan is to transition into a paid subscription model if I keep the momentum going.