Arabs and Muslims are sharply divided in the US presidential election given that they are put off by Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies but, at the same time, deeply aggrieved with the Biden-Harris administration’s policy of consistently arming Netanyahu to massacre and starve Palestinians. To win the critical swing state of Michigan with its significant population of Arab and Muslim Americans, the presidential candidates are trying to woo them but without much to offer.
China, on the other hand, has no Israel-Palestine problem dividing its people. The Chinese populace do not share the same level of geopolitical engagement. Among Arabs and Muslim communities, it enjoys increasing popularity. Beijing did not condemn the October 7 attack on Israeli citizens; however, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has advocated for a ceasefire and urged both sides to aim for a “two-state solution.”
“Israel’s actions have gone beyond self-defense and it should heed the call of the international community and the Secretary-General of the United Nations to stop its collective punishment of the people in Gaza,” Wang Yi told his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud during a phone call.
With four Chinese citizens dead, two missing and six injured, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson warned its remaining citizens to leave Israel and the occupied territories for safety. Fu Cong, China’s permanent representative at the UN General Assembly, draws headlines in the Global South by speaking for “the voiceless” through condemning the US role and Israeli massacres in Gaza and Lebanon. Chinese foreign language state media echoes Beijing’s pro-Palestine talking points on a continuous basis.
Though since the time of Mao Zedong, China has been supporting Palestinian statehood, its balanced and cautious anti-Western posturing on the issue serves both ends. What is not trumpeted by the Chinese foreign media and the Arab outlets is the trade volume between Tel Aviv and Beijing. China has invested more in Israel than Iran since 2010 for example. The simmering US trade offensive against China has impacted the innovative comprehensive partnership more than the killing of an Iranian general, Hezbollah leaders and Hamas commanders. The “marriage made in heaven” has strained a little since the October 7 attack, but the knot is far from loosening. They can still do business. For their bold stance against the Israeli attacks, Ireland and Norway have mattered more for Israeli public opinion than China.
China’s support for Palestinians in Gaza does not only resonate at the UN Security Council. It has also challenged Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories at the International Court of Justice. Within a year, it convened two reconciliatory meetings of 14 Palestinian political factions; most noteworthy among them were rival groups. The resulting Beijing Declaration is a principal agreement to end divisions and strengthen national unity for the sake of realizing Palestinian statehood. The positions that Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have taken seem too entrenched to be given up in two sittings while the Palestinian people are at risk of further expulsion and mass murder. Beijing does back a two-state solution, but its policy undercuts Washington, albeit with unruffled defiance.
The Chinese policy has not irked Israel yet. For Tel Aviv, the Asian superpower offers Palestinians a cathartic platform to vent their rage while it chooses to ignore the Beijing Declaration in the same way that it dismisses the rebukes it receives at the UN Security Council and General Assembly.
The uber-capitalist mercantilist Asian power would neither provide refuge to the displaced Palestinians, unlike the West, nor offer them citizenship. For all practical purposes, China cannot replace Canada, the United States, Europe and even South American countries in the Palestinian and Arab psyche.
With little impact on the ground despite its enormous geopolitical and economic clout, Beijing’s bare-minimum policy is acceptable in the Muslim world, thanks to the United States’ deeply flawed partisan approach to Israel’s right to “self-defense.” The Biden administration’s quandary in striking a sustainable and feasible stratagem on the Israel-Palestine conflict and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set the bar acutely low for China.
During their meeting on the UNGA side-lines, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the Chinese foreign minister that China had a role to play in resolving the conflict. Wang’s visit to the Middle East including Riyadh, Doha and Beirut reflects Beijing’s desire to position itself as a rival power in the region. Beijing is facing a tough predicament to assert its readiness as the conscientious counterweight to the United States. Despite Tel Aviv dropping bombs on Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, the Chinese policy remains rather cautious when it comes to addressing such crises. Beijing is still finding its feet in the region and treading carefully given regional sensitivities and complexities and is eager to maintain existing balances with allies in the region for the sake of national interests. In addition, leaving crises lingering could feed into its geopolitical competition against the United States, with Washington preoccupied with the Middle East, naval and military assets redeployed to the region, and resources consumed rather than focusing on the Indo-Pacific.
