In Search of Alternatives: China's Middle East Policy After Sadat

Abstract

Following their foreign policy shift towards the West in the early 1970s, the Chinese had been 'walking on two legs' in the Middle East. One 'leg' was the Shah of Iran; the other, President Sadat of Egypt. The fall of the Shah did not entail a fundamental modification of Chinese policies in the Middle East, except that it forced China to rely almost exclusively on Egypt. Chinese policies continued to be governed by anti-Soviet considerations, which in turn determined China's stand on regional issues and obscured genuine sources of instability and discontent in the Middle East. Recently, however, the belief that the United States has failed to take the necessary measures to deter the Soviets, and the realisation that Egypt has remained isolated and criticised by the Arab countries, seem to have raised some doubts in the minds of Chinese decision-makers about their, and Egypt's, policies. As long as Sadat was alive these doubts were suppressed; they emerged after his assassination in October 1981. While it did not shake China's basic premises concerning the innate aggressiveness of the Soviet Union and the need for peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Sadat's death enabled the Chinese to explore, within these predetermined and interconnected premises, alternative plans, tactics and allies. China's first ally in the Middle East was the Shah of Iran. His heavy reliance on the West and hostility towards the Soviets converged with China's principal interest in the Middle East checking Soviet 'expansionism'. As Sino-Iranian relations improved the Chinese welcomed, sometimes more than implicitly, consolidation of the American presence in Iran and the Gulf, and the massive Iranian procurement of Western arms., This overall commitment to international strategic considerations dictated the Chinese stand both on Iran's relations with its neighbours and on its domestic situation. Thus, in the 1970s, while maintaining a prima facie neutrality towards the Iraqi-Iranian conflict, the Chinese tended to sympathise with