Why China really wants the Mideast
OPINION:
China has implemented a deft strategy to peel the Middle East away from the United States. Many observers have fixated on the fact that China is doing this to lay claim to the vast oil and natural gas wealth that exists beneath the sands of the region.
Certainly, this is true.
Yet China’s plan goes much deeper than just control over fossil fuel. China wants to partner with and gain access to the budding high-tech development projects occurring throughout the region. In places like Saudi Arabia and Israel, cutting-edge scientific innovation is underway that will directly impact the outcome of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the name experts have given to our current moment of socioeconomic development. It is the creation of new innovations in biotechnology, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, metamaterials, hypersonic technologies, fifth-generation and sixth-generation communications, to name just some advances. The nation that innovates the most in these new domains will be the dominant superpower for the next century.
Previously, the second and third industrial revolutions were dominated by the United States. This was the true source of America’s power and the reason why the U.S. has been the world’s dominant superpower for as long as it has been.
Unfortunately, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, China dominates 37 of the 44 key areas of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Beijing is scaling up this impressive dominance beyond the high-tech sector and applying geopolitics to its quest to be the Fourth Industrial Revolution-controlling superpower (thereby making America and the rest of the world subordinate to Beijing). China’s autocrats are looking to their west, seeking out new development grounds in the one region where most Americans want little involvement: the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is transitioning away from an oil-dominated economy and toward what the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman refers to as “Saudi Vision 2030.” By taking a large share of the Saudi oil conglomerate ARAMCO public, the crown prince hopes to create a new Saudi-led Silicon Valley in the desert that would make Saudi Arabia more than just the world’s oil producer.
China wants to be on the ground floor of this new development. That is one critical reason why Beijing waded into Saudi Arabia’s dispute with Iran and brokered a peace deal between the two sides.
Since the Chinese-brokered peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, China’s state-backed telecommunications firm, Huawei, has announced that it will move its Middle East headquarters to the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
But that is just the start of China’s movement into the Middle East.
Its true target is Israel. In the progressive democracy of Israel exists one of the world’s most advanced high-tech industries. Silicon Wadi (Wadi is Arabic for “desert”) is a term used to describe the various business parks in Israel that have sprouted up over the decade. These areas emulate and work closely with Silicon Valley firms to produce next-generation tech.
Specifically, Israel is pioneering the development of critical biotech and quantum computing advancements that China’s rulers are simply gaga over. There’s also Israel’s budding space sector, which China has already attempted to gain access to over the years. Because of Israel’s American-like tech development practices, the tiny democracy is now a target of what David P. Goldman refers to as “Sino-forming,” which is China’s practice of remaking the world in its own image.
We were told by Beijing’s allies (of which there are far more than Washington is willing to acknowledge) that China’s entry into the Middle East as the arbiter of a new regional order would herald peace and harmony for everyone.
Yet before the ink was barely dry on the Saudi-Iran rapprochement, Iranian-backed militants from Hezbollah in Lebanon began popping rockets off at neighboring Israel. The Netanyahu government can expect more olive branches like this from China-backed Iran.
That’s because China is fomenting this newfound instability. By icing tensions between Riyadh and Tehran, Beijing is creating an axis of autocrats against the democracies — of which Israel is the only one in the region. It’s not that China wants to destroy Israel. It’s that they want to pressure Israel’s leaders through China’s Iranian proxies into abandoning Israel’s alliance with the United States.
In so doing, Beijing hopes to isolate Israel from its traditional allies and then force Israeli leaders to turn to China (and Russia) for help in keeping the nuclear-arming Iranians back from destroying Israel.
The price of such a deal would be complete access to Israel’s high-tech sector, to turn Israel into a conduit for China’s growing high-tech Belt and Road Initiative that stretches from mainland China all the way to Israel’s Mediterranean coastline. Israel would be absorbed in China’s growing Eurasian-and-African-wide trade belt that would empower Beijing at Washington’s expense.
By fusing China’s impressive high-tech sector with the growing high-tech development sectors of Saudi Arabia and Israel, China would not only ensure its dominance of the geostrategically vital Middle East but would also elevate its game in the ongoing race to dominate the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Beijing would effectively make the rest of the world dependent on Chinese-developed high-tech infrastructure in much the same way the Americans made the world dependent on American-developed high technologies in the previous two industrial revolutions. All without a shot ever having been fired. Forget about Taiwan. China is devouring the geopolitical system. Taiwan’s collapse after Beijing finishes eating the world will be ensured — and no one could stop Beijing at that point, even if they wanted to stop China.
The Americans, meanwhile, are busy arguing about which gender they are.
As the former president might tweet: Sad!
• Brandon J. Weichert is a senior editor at 19FortyFive.com and the author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower” (Republic Book Publishers). He is also the author of the “The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy” (Republic Book Publishers) and the forthcoming book “Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life” (Encounter Books). He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
