Neutrality, Leverage, and Timing: China’s Middle East Peace Diplomacy in Perspective

Introduction

In a region that has witnessed the ups and downs of various peace initiatives, plans, and roadmaps, the recent Beijing-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran has drawn growing scrutiny and generated heated debate over China’s motivations and objectives.¹ Coming on the heels of two separate landmark agreements that Beijing signed with Tehran and Riyadh, China’s diplomatic flurry in the Middle East is fueling speculation that it is seizing on the West’s retreat to raise its own profile in a comprehensive way at the expense of the United States.² The Beijing-brokered rapprochement in a region that has long been plagued by ethnic, tribal, and sectarian strife has also presented a notable contrast with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, raising expectations that China could also play peacemaker along the European faultline. The significance of the Iranian–Saudi détente is also underscored by the fact that it is achieved through the good offices of a non-Western power long viewed as a disengaged spectator in regional security affairs. At the same time, the quick succession of events in late 2022 — from the summit meetings between President Xi and top leaders of Iran and Saudi Arabia to the trilateral meetings of top diplomats in Beijing — seems to have shifted the policy debate within China in favor of a robust and sustainable role in regional economics, politics, and security.

Speculation and skepticism surrounding Beijing’s peace diplomacy in the Middle East center are around the following major questions. First, does Beijing’s recent peace offensive help change the Middle East dynamics in any significant way, and how? Second, what has set China apart from other regional stakeholders when it comes to the approach to the peace process? And third, how to evaluate the challenges and prospects for China’s role in regional conflict resolution? In answering the three questions, the author argues that a contributing factor to the Beijing-brokered peace deal is China’s effort at striking a balance between neutrality and leverage, between exogenous facilitation and endogenous initiative, and between passive peace and positive peace. Learning from the West’s mixed record, Beijing has moved with caution. While inserting itself into regional affairs not as a disinterested onlooker but an engaged stakeholder, China has refrained from getting involved in any local sectarian conflict, territorial dispute, or ideological contest. Intensifying — not sought-after — rivalry with the United States has accelerated China’s westward turn, as Beijing searches for new, reliable partners to raise its profile on the world stage on the one hand and fend off Washington’s pressure campaign on the other.³ While not totally free of geopolitical calculations, Beijing’s foray into the Middle East mainly involves economic statecraft. Its intensive diplomatic engagement with Middle Eastern countries focuses on increasing its own credibility, helping erect a robust, resilient security architecture, and providing additional avenues for regular dialogue and exchange.

The remainder of this paper proceeds in four sections. The first one is a summary of existing mediation efforts and their legacies in the Middle East. The second section introduces “the mediator’s dilemma” and examines the drawbacks of the U.S. approach to mediation. The third lays out China’s official positions on the Middle East peace process and the key elements of Beijing’s peacemaking efforts. The fourth section analyzes the possible challenges for China’s peace diplomacy in the long haul and makes a number of policy recommendations which are followed by some concluding remarks.

Decades of Mediation in the Quest for an Elusive Peace

Sitting at the crossroads of distinct civilizations and religions, the Middle East has witnessed its share of cultural progress and human tragedy. In more recent times, the Middle East has been the world’s most combustible region, long plagued by political upheaval, sectarian strife, and ideological rivalry. At the same time, the region has also been a testing ground for a wide variety of peace plans and roadmaps. Since the 1970s, the United States has been the leading outside peacemaker in the region. The first major breakthrough in the peace process came in 1978 when Israel and Egypt signed the landmark Camp David Accords.⁴ More than a decade later, U.S.-led peace initiatives produced a new peace deal, the Oslo Accords, between Israel and another regional player, the Palestinians, establishing a framework for resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and creating a Palestinian state.⁵ The Republican administration also had its share of success. President Trump brought together Israel and four other Arab states under the Abraham Accords in 2020.⁶

Notwithstanding these milestone peace deals brokered by Washington over the decades, the West’s record of peacemaking efforts in the region remains mixed. Take the Oslo Accords as an example. While the framework might have provided a possible path to the final peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, in the years since it was signed, tragic events between the two peoples were never far away and the deal has never been immune from charges of bias and inequality.⁷ Similarly, the Abraham Accords have been criticized for ignoring the plight of the Palestinians.⁸ Moreover, domestic politics continues to take its toll on Middle East peace and stability. The latest prime example is the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action despite Iran’s certified compliance with the deal and the ensuing maximum pressure campaign against Tehran.

This mixed record has led to vociferous calls for alternative approaches. Some scholars have tapped into Islamic traditions to find possible solutions, underscoring the value of key tenets such as sulh (settlement), musalaha (reconciliation), wasta (patronage-mediation), and tahkeem (arbitration). Comparative studies on local traditional methods of mediation and the Western approach find that while the former view mediation as a long-term process of dialogue and negotiation the latter tends to impose expedient solutions.⁹

Given Beijing’s rising global profile and its increasing diplomatic engagement with the Middle East, the world’s top energy consumer’s attitudes and approaches regarding Middle East peace have garnered growing attention in recent years. Some studies analyze the motivations behind China’s offer of good offices, pointing out that deepening interests and influence in the region have transformed China from a conflict avoider into an earnest peacemaker. Some have noted China’s pragmatic and flexible approach within the confines of its long-held principle of noninterference and its focus on negative peace rather than positive peace. Others looked into China’s mediation in specific cases in Sudan, Libya, and Syria, highlighting China’s own formulation of “creative involvement” short of crossing the red line of interference.¹⁰

The Beijing-brokered détente has revived talk of diversifying and updating peacemaking efforts in the Middle East, as more and more regional stakeholders have come to realize the importance of overcoming the mediator’s dilemma.

The Mediator’s Dilemma: Limits of the Current Approach

The mediator’s dilemma in the Middle East is threefold. The first concerns neutrality and leverage. Although neutrality is the major source of a mediator’s credibility, many studies have emphasized that outcomes of peacemaking efforts ultimately depend on the mediator’s leverage.¹¹ Without neutrality, the mediator cannot establish any meaningful channels of communication between disputants as its actions would lack any persuasive power. At the same time, neutrality alone is not adequate to the challenges involved in any mediation effort. Disputants, under no significant pressure, may well choose to wait out the mediator’s peace diplomacy.

The second involves the will to impose peace from the outside as opposed to internal incentives for reconciliation. There has always been heated debate over which approach to peace mediation works better, top-down or bottom-up. The top-down approach emphasizes the will and clout of an external mediator as the key determinants of effective mediation, while the bottom-up approach prioritizes the peace initiatives of local actors, underscoring the ripeness for mediation.¹² While the top-down approach believes that an external power can impose its will on local actors and force them to adjust their incentive structure to facilitate reconciliation, the bottom-up approach respects the disputants’ internal shift toward a conciliatory posture.

The third concerns the emphasis on short-term passive peace or long-term positive peace. While passive peace refers to the absence of violence and chaos, positive peace is defined as attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. Positive peace arises from a transformation of disputants’ incentive structure, which paves the way for a prevalent peace culture. Peace mediation may involve an externally imposed solution and quid pro quo for a short-term peace deal. However, in the absence of internal incentives for building positive peace, short-term deals are unlikely to endure and temporary peace may relapse into chaos.

In the Middle East, Washington’s mediation between Arab nations and Israel as well as between Israel and the Palestinians exemplifies the threefold dilemma. U.S. peace diplomacy over the years has relied on its strong leverage and featured a top-down approach. Washington has abiding interests in the Middle East and has maintained a substantial military presence since the beginning of the Cold War. Though its strategic posture in the region has evolved, commitment to Israeli security remains a constant, shaping its military deployment, nonproliferation initiatives, and counterterrorism operations. Given its overwhelming strength and unchallenged dominance in the region, Washington has long been viewed as the only country with the necessary political and economic resources to influence major disputants’ thinking and behavior. No regional peace plan or roadmap will be feasible without U.S. blessing. Over the past decades, peace talks might have dragged on with no major breakthrough had the United States not brought its political and military clout to bear. In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger initiated the Middle East peace process by cajoling and coercing.¹³ Over the ensuing decades, successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, have all wielded sticks and dangled carrots to bring disputants to the negotiating table. However, there are obvious limits to the U.S. approach. Washington’s pro-Israel and anti-Iran neutrality has long undercut its credibility and eroded the public support for its mediation in the region. A powerful but biased mediator is like a double-edged sword. Washington’s alliance networks with local actors have failed to persuade other nations that it is an honest broker, as few really believe that the White House has been even-handed in its dealings with regional players. For example, in mediating between the Israelis and Palestinians, Washington’s acquiescence to the former’s hardline policy has prolonged rather than accelerated the peace process. Another example is the Iran nuclear deal, which the United States signed under a Democratic president in 2015 but pulled out less than three years later under a Republican administration. Such flip-flops have cast a long shadow over U.S.–Iran relations and public trust in U.S. peace diplomacy. As Peter Beinart pointed out in the New York Times article, “(Iran) swerved because the United States spurned those overtures and drove them into the arms of America’s great-power foes.”¹⁴

Externally imposed peace also undermines the longevity and inclusivity of regional reconciliation. Temporary peace imposed on disputants may increase their skepticism and grievances, leaving them with less incentive to pursue real rapprochement. One case in point is Israel’s continued expansion of settlement in the West Bank. A closer look at U.S. peace diplomacy between the Arabs and Israelis reveals an interesting pattern: any reconciliation between an Arab country and Israel usually elicits skepticism and criticism from other regional actors. After the Camp David Accords in the 1970s, Egypt was almost expelled from the Arab League. Following the Abraham Accords, the United Arab Emirates also faced strong criticisms for its marginalization of the interests of Palestinians. Alliances are based on the containment of enemies and rapprochement brought about by leveraging alliance politics only heightens others’ sense of insecurity.

Moreover, the theory on political reconciliation finds that rapprochement is not only a political process but also a psychological process.¹⁵ The power to mediate refers to not only the hard power such as alliance networks and military presence but also soft power like moral image. The U.S. has no doubt the strongest hard power in Middle East regional affairs, but its entrapment in Middle East conflicts also created many liabilities and even some psychological traumas among many people in the Middle East.

China’s Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East

There has been a palpable shift in China’s policy in the Middle East. Its mediation in the region reflects Beijing’s vision of a Middle East security architecture. Its recent peacemaking efforts involve clarifying principles, building platforms, and addressing specific issues.

First, China’s principles for handling conflicts in the Middle East have undergone some evolution. In 2014, President Xi Jinping, in his opening remarks at the eighth ministerial meeting of the Sino-Arab Cooperation Forum, proposed the building of a common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security architecture in the Middle East. This principle is a core vision in Beijing’s concept paper on the Global Security Initiative.¹⁶ Besides this vision, China has laid out other key principles for addressing global security issues, such as respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity; upholding the purposes and principles of the UN Charter; accounting for the legitimate security concerns of all countries, and peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation. For the Middle East, China has set out five principles for its approach to the peace process, which are mutual respect, fairness and justice, nonproliferation, collective security, and development cooperation.¹⁷ China believes that peace per se has its own value, just as made clear in the Global Security Initiative, “war and sanctions are no fundamental solution to disputes; only dialogue and consultation are effective in resolving differences.”¹⁸ However, China also believes peaceful consultation for security affairs must be premised on respect for sovereignty and legitimate security concerns. These official principles are an extension of the general principles in Beijing’s conduct of foreign relations.

Second, China is also actively building relevant platforms and mechanisms for negotiations and dialogues in the Middle East. Security architecture is important because it provides a framework for understanding how states interact with each other and how they can work together to promote peace and stability in the international system. Because of the complex security situation and conflict entanglements in the Middle East, it is difficult to have an inclusive and all-encompassing regional dialogue mechanism for Middle East security. Notwithstanding, China has made a series of attempts at institution building, including the establishment of the Middle East Security Forum and the proposal of the Gulf Security Platform. The Middle East Security Forum is a track 1.5 dialogue mechanism and has been held twice with the aim of promoting dialogue and cooperation between China and the Middle East on security issues. The forum is also an opportunity for China to showcase its role as a mediator in the region. The Gulf Security Platform is a new security architecture for the Gulf region proposed under the Global Security Initiative with the aim of providing an equal, open, action-oriented platform for building enduring peace in the Middle East.¹⁹

Third, China also proposes several specific plans for conflict resolution in the Middle East. China has already set the position of special envoy for the Middle East to use shuttle diplomacy to address a variety of conflict issues. As Beijing sees it, there are no cookie-cutter solutions for Middle East problems, and each must be addressed in a specific, tailored way. For the Palestinian issue, in June 2023, President Xi Jinping put forward three points: respect for Palestine’s sovereignty based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital; meeting the economic and livelihood needs of Palestine, and keeping up the momentum of peace talks.²⁰ For the Syria crisis, China also proposed four principles, namely, respect for Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, putting people’s livelihoods first and speeding up reconstruction, persisting in effectively combating terrorism, and working toward an inclusive and negotiated political settlement.

China’s recent mediation between Saudi and Iran is, on the one hand, a continuation of its policy principles for Middle Eastern security affairs, and displays some distinct features that may help overcome the mediator’s dilemma. Beijing’s neutrality is based on its respect for agreed-upon rules governing international relations, its leverage comes from China’s partnerships and extensive economic ties with regional stakeholders, and its effectiveness is due to its respect for regional autonomy. The combination of these three elements helps China achieve the Saudi–Iranian détente.

Compared with the United States and other Western powers, China has no colonial history in the Middle East and has not conducted any kind of military or political intervention in the region. China has always chosen to stand on the side of territorial integrity whenever conflict and crisis arise. In the 2003 Iraq war, China strongly opposed the U.S. invasion and believed it was a violation of international law and the UN Charter. During the Arab Spring, China also vetoed Western-imposed sanctions on the Syrian government, which then was regarded as controversial and faced criticism from Arab countries. China’s commitment to upholding sovereignty and territorial integrity has won wide respect among different Middle Eastern countries and generated local trust for China to become a fair mediator. According to the latest theories of political reconciliation, a disputant’s trust in an outside mediator comes not only from tangible material interests but also from collective memory and past interaction. Compared with the United States, China’s image is much more positive and has a “clean” history of non-involvement in regional conflicts and respect for the sovereignty and autonomy of regional powers.

Beijing’s leverage in its peacemaking efforts comes from China’s partnerships and economic strength. Decades of sustained economic growth have allowed Beijing to bring its extensive economic partnerships to bear in its conduct of foreign relations. The key feature of partnership diplomacy is its focus on inclusive cooperation and nonconfrontational stance toward third parties. China’s partnership diplomacy is substantially different from U.S. alliance networks and many of Washington’s allies are also China’s strategic partners. China has already built comprehensive strategic partnerships with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, which symbolize their robust ties with Beijing. It has played an impartial and equidistant role in peace diplomacy with Saudi and Iran. For example, in the wake of President Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia in December 2022 in which the two countries elevated the bilateral relationship to a new level, there appeared some speculation in some Iranian quarters about China’s impartiality claims. Several months later, China played host to the Iranian President in Beijing and also substantially upgraded the bilateral relationship. During the time when Iran and Saudi Arabia confronted each other, the sustainability of China’s partnerships with both was cast into doubt and some argued that Beijing should side with Iran to form an anti-West coalition in the Middle East. But China sticks to the principle of partnership but not alignment. The inclusive partnership network in which China has invested has paved the way for its growing leverage in this region. China remains the top trading partner with both Iran and Saudi Arabia. What’s more, both Iran and Saudi Arabia have become active participants in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It has been argued that China is a geoeconomic player in the Middle East, promoting win–win cooperation as opposed to the U.S. geopolitical zero-sum logic. Therefore, China’s equal partnerships with both Saudi and Iran and its economic input in the region have made China not only a neutral but also an influential player in the mediation of regional affairs.

The third feature is Beijing’s advocacy of regional autonomy. In mediation theory, the conflict dynamic is one of the most important structural conditions for peacemaking. The ripeness theory predicts that the window of opportunity for mediation opens when each side of the conflict is tired of fighting. In the case of recent Saudi–Iranian tensions, Riyadh’s sense of insecurity came from Tehran’s expansion of influence in the wake of the Arab Spring as the power vacuum seemed to have been filled by many influential nonstate armed groups, such as the Houthis in Yemen. The rise of ISIS also increased the regional government’s reliance on paramilitary group, such as People’s Mobilization Forces in Iraq. The deterioration of the security situation and the proliferation of armed groups had caused tremendous concern for regional powers like Saudi Arabia that Iran would accelerate its regional hegemonic agenda through these militant organizations. Therefore, in 2015, Saudi Arabia decided to lead a military coalition in Yemen to contain the Houthi militia and Iran’s expansionism. However, after almost a decade of conflict, both Saudi Arabia and Iran have realized that the continuation of the conflict is not in each other’s interests. For Saudi Arabia, the conflict dynamic has reached a stalemate that no side can achieve absolute military victory against the other. The Saudi-led coalition has failed to defeat the Houthis militarily or to restore the government the group toppled. The battlefield stalemate has compelled Saudi Arabia to reflect on its previous strategy of confrontation against Iran. Saudi Arabia also realized that the continuation of the conflict might hinder its overall development and the Vision 2030 modernization program. Since then the Saudis have been trying to de-securitize its relationship with Iran. For Iran, prolonging its conflict with the Saudis is also not in its interests. After years of sanctions by the West, Iran’s domestic economy is under tremendous stress. The waves of protest movements in Iran since 2022 are a vivid demonstration of Iranians’ dissatisfaction with the current economic situation. Therefore, a less hostile and more stable relationship with its neighbor is in Iran’s strategic interest. It was against this background that Iraq initiated mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2019 to reverse a rupture in relations that occurred in 2016. Between 2020 and 2022, Iraq hosted five rounds of Iranian–Saudi negotiations in Baghdad. Oman was also involved in the peace diplomacy. The active participation by regional actors in peace has provided a golden window of opportunity for China to engage in mediation, which culminated in the peace deal signed in Beijing in March 2023.

The three features of China’s mediation between Riyadh and Tehran are mutually reinforcing. It has helped alleviate the mediator’s dilemma, which may pave the way for a more sustainable peace in the Middle East.

First, China’s approach strikes a balance between leverage and neutrality. The balance is achieved in a combination of upholding principles and building wide partnerships. As stated in another analysis, China’s approach could be described as the power of not using the power, representing its smart use of economic power of engagement while avoiding engaging in direct coercive intervention.²¹ Even without a substantial military presence, China is still viewed as an influential player due to its robust and extensive economic ties with regional countries. The leverage that stems from tangible economic cooperation is much more inclusive than the leverage based on military alliances. What’s more, China’s adherence to the inviolability of sovereignty and territorial integrity has earned the support and trust of regional countries. Such trust is especially important to facilitating Iran’s agreement to the peace deal, given its glaring trust deficit with many Western powers. China’s success in mediation between Saudi Arabia and Iran may point to a middle path between neutrality and leverage.

Second, China’s approach also strikes a balance between external facilitation and local parties’ autonomy. Its peacemaking efforts rely on persuasion and patience. On the one hand, Beijing has insisted on the use of political dialogue and persuasion for mediation. The Global Security Initiative has made clear China’s commitment to “peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation,” opposition to war and sanctions as the fundamental solution to disputes, and insistence on dialogue and consultation as the most effective way of resolving differences. Mediation by persuasion requires patience, patience to wait until the evolution of conflict dynamic on the ground into a window of opportunity for negotiation. China’s mediation is not a sprint to a quick, short-term peace agreement, but a marathon that will finally lead to a more sustainable peace.

Third, Beijing has also struck a balance between short-term passive peace deal and long-term positive peace solution. As stated in the Global Security Initiative, “War and sanctions are no fundamental solution to disputes and the root cause of conflict needs to be managed.” China uses its economic leverage and partnership not only just for a short-term pause in regional hostilities but also for a sustainable peace based on the common agenda of development. In recent years, developmental peace theory has gained traction, which emphasizes creating the structural conditions conducive for peace and adjustment of internal incentives on the part of disputants for peace.²² On the one hand, development will create strong momentum for general modernization and the interdependent relationships among different societal actors. With the gradual spread of supply chain and increasing division of work among all societal actors, the cost of conflict will be increasingly higher for those societies with developed economy. On the other hand, development also aims at providing the dividends of peace for those stakeholders in conflicts. Prevailing war theories point to benefits outweighing costs as the cause of war. Therefore, the ultimate challenge for any mediator is to provide an alternative incentive structure to increase the benefits of peace and the costs of war. China’s extensive economic ties in the Middle East are a potential source of enormous peace dividends.

Challenges for China’s Peace Diplomacy

Despite the recent success, Beijing’s peacemaking efforts in the Middle East also face significant limits and challenges. Chief among them is the complex nature of Middle East politics, the interference from established powers, and the adaptation of China’s mediation to local parties’ needs.

First, the complex nature of Middle East politics will continue to test China’s ability to navigate the uncharted territory. Despite the current momentum for peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the security dilemma between the two remains. A survey of the history of Iranian–Saudi relations shows that the current reconciliation could still be fragile and descend into conflict. What’s more, given the ingrained sectarian differences and the structural competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran for regional dominance, it is fair to admit that the risk of politicizing the sectarian conflict remains high. As mentioned above, China’s mediation relies on local parties’ endogenous desire for peace. Therefore, the intense regional security dilemma could still pose a serious challenge for China’s mediation. Besides, there is also the issue of fragmentation of conflict actors in the Middle East. The rampant proliferation of non-state armed groups is not only seed of instability but also may become politicized as the proxy of regional countries’ conflict. China has already accumulated experience in mediating between state actors, but has yet to engage in dealings with non-state armed groups.

Second, interference from other external forces in the Middle East could undermine the peace momentum. Despite growing strategic autonomy, the Middle East is still a region susceptible to foreign intervention. On the one hand, external powers such as the United States, Russia, and France still maintain a large military presence in the region. On the other hand, the possible return of maximum pressure on Iran after the possible shift of power to the Republican Party in 2024 could further destabilize the region. Given the current tensions between China and the United States, external interference may increase the risk of regional confrontation and pose challenge to China’s mediation.

Third, recent Chinese mediation may raise local expectations to such levels that Beijing may find hard to meet. According to some research on Islamic ways of mediation, Islamic culture tends to view the mediator not only as a neutral facilitator but a powerful arbiter of disputes.²³ China’s role in the Middle East has always been one of a facilitator for regional peace negotiations, doing its best to help implement local parties’ own choices. In the years to come, it will not perceive itself as a security guarantor as it learns from the U.S. experience of the potential risks of strategic entrapment. Therefore, the gap between China’s self-image and regional countries’ expectations may undercut the sustainability of Chinese mediation.

Conclusion

Beijing’s peacemaking efforts in the Middle East are part of a broader diplomatic offensive to raise its profile on the world stage as a responsible great power in times of turbulence and uncertainty. Intensive engagements with regional players in recent years complement other earlier economic, security, and governance initiatives in an attempt to provide more global public goods. Even as it continues to expand its economic links with the region, Beijing understands that as a latecomer, the best it can do in the near term is build credibility with local stakeholders by providing more avenues for dialogue and exchange, adding to existing peace momentum, and acting as a real intermediary.

As Beijing sees it, the Saudi–Iranian rapprochement could help generate further momentum for creating a more inclusive, resilient, and robust mechanism for crisis communication and management. At the same time, local peace diplomacy should also be complemented by more vigorous efforts to boost economic growth. China should do more to bring the two countries closer under the Belt and Road Initiative to cement the recent trilateral goodwill. If things go well, the détente may also help advance other initiatives such as the Global Civilization Initiative aimed at reducing the risks of conflict arising from ideological and religious rivalry.

Notes