The Chinese President Xi Jinping is setting out on his first tour of the Middle East next Tuesday which will last five days and cover the three heavyweights in the region – Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. The tour has been in the making for months and the fact that the explosive Saudi-Iran rift has not derailed it draws attention.(…)
Only yesterday China published its first-ever ‘Arab Policy Paper’ underscoring that the Middle East is a region of high geopolitical importance for China and that Beijing is willing to step up its strategic partnership with the countries of the region as well as play a constructive role in the affairs of the region. The new thinking outlined in the paper is in marked departure from the traditional stand-offish approach of avoiding entanglement in the Middle East diplomacy and concentrating instead on the region’s oil and business opportunities.