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Yun Sun
In the past two decades, China has rapidly emerged as an increasingly consequential economic, political, and security actor in the Middle East. China is the largest consumer of Middle Eastern oil, Chinese trade with the region has more than tripled over the past 20 years, and China is playing an expanding role in regional peace, security, and diplomacy. Beijing’s strategy in the Middle East has emphasized a comprehensive plan to expand its influence in almost all key domains. The next four years will be essential to China’s acceleration of its political, economic, and diplomatic engagement in the Middle East, with a strong focus on diversifying economic ties, involvement in peace and mediation, and managing a regional power equilibrium that has shifted as the result of the war in Gaza.
Yun Sun, is a nonresident fellow with the Africa Growth Initiative and the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. She also serves as co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the China Program at the Stimson Center. Her expertise is in Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and China’s relations with neighboring countries and authoritarian regimes. From 2011 to early 2014, she was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, appointed by the Foreign Policy Program and the Global Economy and Development Program, where she focused on Chinese national security decision-making processes and China-Africa relations. From 2008 to 2011, Yun Sun was the China Analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG) based in Beijing, specializing on China’s policy towards conflict countries and the developing world. Prior to ICG, she worked on U.S.-Asia relations in Washington, D.C. Her work is regularly cited by Voice of America, Axios, and other prominent news outlets and publications. Yun Sun earned her master’s degree in international policy and practice from George Washington University, as well as an M.A. in Asia Pacific studies and a B.A. in international relations from Foreign Affairs College in Beijing.
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Jeremy Garlick
China and the United States have very different approaches to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Over the long-term, the U.S. is engaged geopolitically, backing Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iran, and taking military action in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen. In contrast, China pursues economic interests through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), strategically hedging and building relations with the leaders and elites of all countries in the region regardless of their rivalries.
Jeremy Garlick, is the director of the Jan Masaryk Centre for International Studies at Prague University of Economics and Business. His research focuses on China’s international relations, especially through the Belt and Road Initiative.
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Geoffrey F. Gresh
China is potentially well positioned to take a larger maritime role in the MENA region as it works toward sustaining its blue-water naval capacity and reach. It is using new maritime geoeconomic investments from the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea and Gulf to create and fortify maritime trade and logistics networks that are growing increasingly independent from the global system that has been dominated for so long by the United States and the West. This system includes a new network of Chinese-dominated ports and infrastructure projects, in addition to a robust telecommunications network aided by submarine cables newly laid across the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. China’s maritime geoeconomic interests are giving way to increased investments in its blue-water naval capabilities. China wants to avoid another Libya or Yemen scenario in the future where it had to rescue Chinese foreign nationals. To do so, it will need to take a more proactive security stance to ensure that its growing investments and regional interests are protected. It cannot rely on another power and therefore will need to continue the forward projection of its military and navy.
Geoffrey F. Gresh, is Professor of International Security Studies at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA), National Defense University in Washington, D.C. with a primary research focus on maritime and naval affairs. He has previously served as the Department Chair of International Security Studies, CISA’s thesis/portfolio co-director, and as CISA’s Director of the South and Central Asia Security Studies Program.
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Kenan Dagci
China’s diplomatic strategy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) employs a hedging strategy to balance relations with rival states like Saudi Arabia and Iran. This approach allows China to maximize economic and strategic gains while avoiding entanglement in regional conflicts. Through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), economic partnerships, diplomatic neutrality, and limited military engagements, China maintains flexibility to secure its interests amid regional complexities.
Kenan Dagci, Ph.D., is the former Director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution (2010–2014) and the Institute of Social Sciences (2014–2016) at Yalova University. He also served as a visiting scholar at Cornell University (2011–2012). His research focuses on European Union foreign policy, Turkey-EU relations, and conflict resolution, with a particular emphasis on the Middle East and Central Asia.
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Yao Chen and Tuncay Kardaş
This study analyses the mechanisms through which China performs its balancing act when dealing with regional rivalries in the Middle East, especially between Saudi Arabia and Iran. We argue that unlike traditional balance of power practices in the Western context, China’s understanding can be better described with the Chinese phrase “Ping-Heng” (平衡). The latter refers to holding a balanced position among states in rivalry and keeping good relations with all of them. China performs its balancing strategy mainly through three mechanisms. Diplomatically, it establishes same-level partnerships with both by paying identical state visits, and by promptly soothing one’s dissatisfaction with diplomatic interactions with the other. Institutionally, China seeks to absorb Saudi Arabia and Iran into multi-lateral organizations, such as SCO and BRICS, by providing platforms for them to promote mutual communication and cooperation. Militarily, China keeps abundant arms sales to Saudi while holding more drills with Iran to alleviate security concerns of each side. Under China’s balanced act, Saudi Arabia and Iran understand China as a reliable broker.
Yao Chen, PhD Candidate, School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Shanghai International Studies University, China.
Tuncay Kardaş, Professor, Director of Middle East Institute, Sakarya University, Türkiye.
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Manfred A. Lange
Current migration in the MENA region has assumed levels unprecedented in recent history. A triplet of drivers involving environmental change, migration and conflicts, are root
causes for individuals and communities to move and have been contextualized in the Environmental Change- Migration-Conflict Nexus (ECMC-N). while numerous links between these drivers are known, a comprehensive quantitative description of these links remains forthcoming. Such descriptions will be instrumental in specifying policy measures to reduce adverse consequences of the ECMC-N through joint initiatives by the MENA countries’ governments.
Manfred A. Lange, former Director of the Arctic Center in Rovaniemi, Finland (1992-1995) and Professor of Geophysics at the University of Münster in Germany (1995-2007), was the founding Director of the Energy, Environment and water Research Center at the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus (www.cyi.ac.cy; 2007-2015). His research includes the assessment of climate change impacts with a focus on water- and energy security, renewable energy sources and energy- and water use efficiency in the built environment.
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Katja Mielke
After decades of war, Afghans were ‘globalized’ long before 2021. Their dispersion worldwide is in stark contrast with their current de facto immobilization. National geopolitical interests in Pakistan and Iran, strategic non-regulation, and a renewed populist turn in European migration governance constitute Afghans as objects – deportable, deniable, illegalized and subjected to instrumentalization if needed. Subsequently, Afghans are caught in a Catch 22-situation with nowhere to (re)turn to.
Katja Mielke, Dr phil, works as Senior Researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (bicc). Her academic interest focuses on informality in migration governance at different levels and inequality in power relations within the international cooperation regime. Region-wise she specializes on Central, west- and South Asia, with practical experience in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, besides the post-Soviet Central Asian states.
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Amrita Jash
In the last two decades, owing to its geopolitical aspirations, economic interests, and energy diversification, China has gained a significant presence and influence in the Middle East. This has been further accentuated under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)- furthering Beijing’s commercial and strategic ties with the region. what is true, China’s foothold in the Middle East has not just increased in economic terms but can also be measured by the substantial increase in Chinese migration- with an estimated presence of over 1 million Chinese expatriates residing in the region.
Amrita Jash is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (Institution of Eminence), Manipal, India. She holds a Ph.D. in Chinese Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has authored China’s Japan Policy: Learning from the Past (Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2023) and The Concept of Active Defence in China’s Military Strategy (Pentagon Press, 2021).
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Katherine Holden and Gawdat Bahgat
The MENA region faces persistent economic and political challenges, including high youth unemployment and gender inequality. Economic growth has fluctuated, with significant declines due to civil wars, regional conflicts, and natural disasters. Despite low greenhouse gas emissions, the region is highly vulnerable to climate change, impacting water and food security and driving migration. The Middle East’s strategic location attracts global power interests, complicating regional stability. Conflicting foreign interests have fueled ethnic and sectarian conflicts, hindering development. The decline of global multilateralism has weakened responses to crises in Libya and Sudan.
Katherine Holden is a graduate student at Oklahoma University. Her areas of expertise include energy security and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Gawdat Bahgat is a professor at National Defense University. His areas of expertise include American foreign policy and the Middle East.
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Amira Ahmed
How the Neighbouring Countries Respond to Refugee Crisis in the Global South? This paper sets out to show how the previously fluid borders of the countries of the
Global South became sharply divided and resistant to receiving migrants and refugees from neighbouring countries. It traces the development of a historically political discourse from “one people, one nation” to “dangerous refugees”. In doing so, it focuses on the case of the Sudanese migrants and refugees in Egypt, the largest Sudanese population living outside Sudan. Looking at the historical trajectories of migration between the two countries, the present domestic challenges, and the current global shifts in migration policies and discourse; the paper examines how “the Sudanese sisters and brothers of the Nile Valley” became alienated in Egypt, and how their presence evolved from being perceived as desirable and spontaneous to becoming risky and dangerous by threatening the demography, cultural hegemony and economic prosperity and development of the receiving neighbouring country.
Dr Amira Ahmed is both a scholar and practitioner in the fields of diaspora engagement, migration,
refugees, human trafficking, gender and climate change. She is an Assistant Professor currently
based at the American University in Cairo in Egypt.
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James M. Dorsey
Syrian exiles in Turkey, home to the world’s largest Syrian refugee community, are caught in a Catch-22. Many no longer see Turkey as a safe refuge as anti-migrant sentiment in the country mounts. Even worse, Turkish efforts to improve relations with President Bashar al-Assad, whose overthrow Turkey long favored, raise the specter of forced repatriation. Exiles fear that their return will expose them to the Syrian regime’s wrath or turn them into pawns in a demographic game of chess in Turkish and rebel-controlled parts of northern Syria. By relocating refugees of Arab descent to the north of Syria, Turkey hopes to dilute the Syrian Kurdish presence in the region. The exiles’ fate hangs in the balance, with Al-Assad adopting a hard line in negotiating the terms of a reconciliation. Al-Assad insists on an agreed withdrawal of Turkish troops from Syria
as part of a reconciliation. Turkey may no longer seek Al-Assad’s overthrow but says it will discuss a troop withdrawal only once Syria adopts a new constitution and holds inclusive elections in the knowledge that Al-Assadhas no intention of committing political hara-kiri. None of this precludes a mutually beneficial burying of the hatchet that would serve the interests of the Al-Assad regime and Turkey but may not bode well for Turkey’s Syrian exile community.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow focused on the Middle East and North Africa who publishes widely in peer-reviewed journals as well as non-academic publications. A veteran, award-winning foreign correspondent for four decades in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the United States for publications such as The wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Financial Times, James has met a multitude of the region’s leaders.
James writes a widely acclaimed blog, The Turbulent world of Middle East Soccer, has published a book with the same title, and authors a syndicated column.
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