Just as President Biden lowers the level of priority the U.S. considers the Middle East, China is ramping up its efforts to reach trade deals and much, much more with nations there, according to a new warning from Judith Bergman, a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
The communist regime now is working to expand vastly its economic and strategic partnerships with Middle East nations, allowing it “to gradually take over the region without creating tensions with the U.S. or the West,” she reported.
“In other words, the [Belt and Road Initiative business agreements] is a sophisticated Chinese plan to transfer hegemony from the West and the U.S. to China without war or conflict.”
The administration of Joe Biden already has possible conflicts regarding China, as Biden’s son, Hunter, has worked on several huge deals involving Chinese companies, and those virtually all have connections in one way or another to the Chinese regime, and its military.
In fact, one of the facts learned from that Hunter Biden-owned laptop that was abandoned at a computer repair shop apparently was that the “Big Guy,” identified by one business partner as Joe Biden, was in line for a percentage of the profits from one of Hunter Biden’s Chinese deals.
Bergman pointed out that one of Biden’s close advisers, a former senior national security officer, said, “If you are going to list the regions Biden sees as a priority, the Middle East is not in the top three.”
Bergman explained Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, recently toured the Middle East and left “little doubt that China is actively seeking to expand its influence in the region, not only economically but also militarily, diplomatically and politically.”
It’s using the BRI, a global infrastructure and economic development strategy that appears to be aimed at connections between Asia and Europe, Africa and more.
Mordechai Chaziz, who wrote “China’s Middle East Diplomacy: The Belt and Road Strategic Partnership,” identified that program as “how China is seeking to collapse Western-American dominance in the region peacefully.”
It was Wang who confirmed to Al Arabiya during his visit to Saudi Arabia that China already has BRI agreements with 19 Middle East countries.
He explained, “As it fosters a new development paradigm, China is ready to share with Middle East countries its market opportunities, work with Arab countries to actively prepare for the China-Arab states summit, promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and expand new areas of growth such as high and new technologies.”
He also visited, just recently, Turkey, Iran, the United Arab Emriates, Oman and Bahrain.
China already is the largest trading partner for many nations there, and reportedly is working on a deal with Tehran that would include “military assistance, training and intelligence-sharing.”
Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted in the Bergman report China’s focus on Egypt.
“In the last five years, as China has grown increasingly concerned with transit through the Suez Canal, China has invested billions of dollars in Egypt. Chinese firms are helping construct Egypt’s new administrative capital in the desert outside of Cairo, and they are developing a Red Sea port and industrial zone in Ain Sukhna. President Sisi has made at least six trips to Beijing since taking office in 2014, compared to just two trips to Washington.”
Wang, in Chinese media, said China and the Middle East nations agreed to oppose “interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and slandering other countries under the guise of human rights.”
But Bergman noted that Wang “overlooked the fact that China had originally offered the world similar assurances in 1984 regarding the retention of Hong Kong’s political and economic system for 50 years after the 1997 return of the territory to Mainland China’s sovereignty, only to renege on this commitment 27 years ahead of the scheduled end of the ‘one country, two systems’ arrangement in 2047.”
And, she said, “Wang also managed to overlook that China broke its 2015 commitment not to ‘militarize’ artificial islands that Beijing had been building in the Spratly Islands chain in the South China Sea and which it is now surrounding with ‘fishing boats’, threatening the nearby Philippines.”
Those “deepening ties,” Bergman said, “should concern the U.S.”
Bergman pointed out that China even has suggested playing a role in “mediating” between Israel and the Palestinians.
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