China's Approach to the Middle East Looks Familiar | The Diplomat - 0 views
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China had typically offered infrastructure-for-energy and other business deals.
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At a lackluster late-October forum on energy cooperation in Beijing this year, trade officials said Arab counterparts had to “restructure their economies,”
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The implications are clear: China has long represented an alternative in the global market for influence once dominated by Washington;
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, UAE enterprise Dubai Ports World pulled out of a plan to manage six U.S. ports after U.S. legislators attacked the deal as a potential security risk.
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China surpassed the United States as the Middle East’s largest export market and also as the largest importer of Middle Eastern oil.
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In the meantime, China built a flurry of projects designed to show its embrace of the Arab world.
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the longest highway in the entire continent of Africa. Corruption allegations over the highway are ongoing.
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The reasons are manifold. An absence of venture capital and innovation in Arab economic planning are among the reasons why the infrastructure didn’t revolutionize the Middle East/North Africa region.
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But as China ascends, the promise of a rising Eastern power is no more. As far as Arabs are concerned, Beijing has done little but reinvent the U.S. model of global dominance.