Present and Future China’s Interests in the Middle East. China has a huge interest in ensuring that the Gulf region is stable.

A regional war that disrupts the oil supply can potentially bring China to an economic halt. If the conflict in Gaza were to spiral to a regional scale, almost certainly, the U.S. would directly intervene, and possibly, China would, too.

The Middle East has been a hot spot in international politics since the end of World War II. In addition to regional contradictions and conflicts, the confrontation and contention between the two superpowers cast a pall over the whole area. For new China, the Middle East was a distant and unfamiliar place. The Chinese government and academia did not know or care about Middle Eastern affairs - the Arab-Israeli wars, the oil embargo, etc. Naturally, the impact of China on the Middle East was limited. What China could do was to stress that it, like most Middle East countries, had suffered colonialist and imperialist aggression and rule and, like them, had to defend the integrity of its territory and sovereignty after independence.

Long embracing political non-interference as a core principle, China has deviated from the deeply entrenched foreign policy norm in the Israeli-Gaza war. China voiced unequivocal support for the Gaza people following the cataclysmic conflict that erupted on 7 October.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged immediate ceasefire in Gaza, reiterated the two-state solution as the only path to peace, criticised Israel for the injustice inflicted on the Palestinians over more than half a century, and categorised the nature of Israel’s current war beyond the scope of self-defense.

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