Reflexive politics and Arab ‘risk society’? COVID-19 and issues of public health
Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh
Long considered peripherical and relatively insignificant by China´s leadership the Broader Middle East and particularly the Gulf States have moved into the focus of China´s foreign, foreign economic and security policy. China´s dependence on the region for oil supply has multiplied due to its economic boom. The safety of the shipping routes across the Arab and the Red Seas and the Suez Canal to Europe have become a Chinese concern too and the influence of Islamic fundamentalism from the region on its own Muslims. While China´s interest in the region has grown, the region is no longer a top priority for the US, since it has become self-sufficient in energy. The US has also reduced its military presence in the region. This leads to the impression that China could replace the US in the medium and longer term. This could indeed be the result, if the US is further retrenching form the region, but there are no signs that China intends to replace or even to push the US out of the region. With frequent top-level visits to key partners China pursues a friends-to-all approach to the region which it tries to integrate more and more in its Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Association. It remains open if Beijing can continue with this approach and avoid getting entangled in the conflicts of the region.
Larbi Sadiki is Professor of Arab Democratization at Qatar University. He is editor of Routledge Handbook of Middle East Politics: Interdisciplinary Inscriptions (2020), as well as lead Principle Investigator of the QNRF-funded 'Transitions of Islam and Democracy: Engendering 'Democratic learning' and Civic Identities.' He recently was a guest editor of a Special Issue of The International Spectator titled 'The GCC in Crisis: Explorations of "Normlessness" in Gulf Regionalism.'
Layla Saleh is Associate Professor of Political Science at Qatar University. She is author of US Hard Power in the Arab World: Resistance, the Syrian Uprising, and the War on Terror (Routledge, 2017), and a Principal Investigator in the QNRF-funded 'Transitions of Islam and Democracy.' With larbi Sadiki, she was guest editor of a Special Issue of The International Spectator titled 'The GCC in Crisis: Explorations of "Normlessness" in Gulf Regionalism.'
