The Chinese Communist Party will begin welcoming a parade of Arab heads of state on Tuesday for a multilateral summit to discuss Mideast issues, including the presidents of Egypt, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum will begin on Thursday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed, with an opening ceremony featuring a speech by dictator Xi Jinping. Xi is currently presiding over the largest known genocide of Muslim people in the world – the ongoing Uyghur genocide in East Turkistan – but majority-Muslim Arab states have largely ignored the human rights crisis and, in some cases, helped China repress activists attempting to raise awareness about the genocide.
Their reward has been a significant increase in commerce with communist China and, for some countries attending the “China-Arab States Cooperation Forum,” membership in the China-led BRICS coalition. Egypt and the UAE joined BRICS – originally consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – alongside Iran and Ethiopia in January. Saudi Arabia received an invitation to join but had not formalized its membership as of February.
According to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, every Arab nation on Earth is a member of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s global infrastructure debt-trap scheme. China has increased its trade in the Arab world from “36.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2004 to a staggering 398 billion dollars in 2023,” the outlet noted.
“The impressive growth has cemented China’s position as the Arab world’s undisputed top trading partner for many years,” Xinhua boasted.
In addition to discussions of deals under the BRI, the top political issue parties expect to address at the Cooperation Forum will be the ongoing war between Israel and the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas. China is not among the world’s most influential players in the Middle East but has vocally defended Hamas since its October 7 siege of Israel and openly stated it is “keen” on expanding relations with the terrorists.
China’s state-run Global Times listed several high-profile Arab leaders expected to attend the summit, including “Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied, and the United Arab Emirates’ President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.” Several other influential regional states will send their foreign ministers or other senior diplomats, the propaganda outlet claimed.
“The China-Arab cooperation has been expanding to more comprehensive areas and is expected to play an active role in regional and global governance with key focus on ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict,” the Global Times claimed, citing regime-approved Chinese “experts.”
In a press conference on Monday in anticipation of the conference, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Deng Li emphasized Beijing’s pursuit of heightened commercial ties with Arab nations, seeking to “uphold the spirit of China-Arab friendship” and expand the influence of the BRI. Deng also said the nations in question would “firmly support each other on issues related to each other’s core interests and major concerns,” a term China often uses to refer to its browbeating of other states not to recognize the existence of Taiwan and not to oppose China’s illegal territorial claims in the South China Sea.
“Arab countries have consistently supported China on key issues such as Taiwan question, the South China Sea, Xinjiang [occupied East Turkistan], and Hong Kong,” a Chinese “expert” told the Global Times.
“Deng Li also answered questions about China-Arab relations and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, among others,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry relayed, without elaborating.
The Times reported from Deng’s press conference that the top official described China’s goals in the Middle East as “to end the conflict in Gaza as soon as possible, achieve peace, and urge the international community to implement the ‘two-state solution,'” meaning the existence of Israel alongside a state of “Palestine.” The creation of a “Palestine” has been for decades hindered by the genocidal nature of groups such as Hamas, which insist on eliminating Israel and replacing it with “Palestine,” as well as the corruption and unpopularity of groups such as the Palestinian Authority.
China has done little to oppose Hamas’s terrorist activities – including not condemning the group’s October 7 siege that left 1,200 people in Israel dead and resulted in the abduction of an estimated 250 – but has vocally opposed Israel’s self-defense operations in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
“To end the cycle of conflict between Palestine and Israel, it is essential to restart the peace talks, implement the two-state solution,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on October 9, as Israeli rescuers were still trying to identify charred, mutilated, and otherwise unrecognizable human remains of Hamas victims. Chinese officials described a “ceasefire” – at that point essentially a halt to any Israeli response to Hamas – as a “top priority” for Beijing in October.
Xi Jinping, in his first personal remarks after October 7, condemned Israel for what he called “collective punishment of people in Gaza.”
“I have emphasized on many occasions that the only viable way to break the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in the two-state solution, in the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine, and in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine,” Xi said in November. “There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine.”
In March, Chinese diplomat Wang Kejian traveled to Qatar to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the “political” leader of Hamas. Hamas claimed that, at the meeting, the Chinese delegation told Haniyeh that it was “keen” on expanding ties with the terrorists. Haniyeh reportedly “praised the role that China plays in the Security Council, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and in sending humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”
The Palestinian Authority’s envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, thanked China for its consistent opposition of Israel in remarks to Xinhua published on Tuesday.
“We highly appreciate Chinese support for the national rights of the Palestinian people, especially since it always calls for peace in the Middle East,” Xinhua quoted Mansour as saying.
“China is one of the main countries that voted in favor of Palestine in the UN General Assembly in order to obtain full membership (for Palestine),” he continued. “All the time, China made big efforts to help Palestinians obtain their full diplomatic, political and economic rights.”
