The Evolution of China’s Security Role in the Gulf and Emerging Challenges to its “Hedging” Diplomacy

Commencing with interests relating to its energy security from 1993, China has steadily expanded its ties with the Gulf, emerging as the region’s principal trade and investment partner. From 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that links east of China with West Asia through multi-modal logistical connectivity projects across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean, now complements China’s energy, economic and technological ties with the region. The policy framework within which China has shaped its approach to the Gulf has been described as “hedging” by Chinese scholars, ie, an approach in which China seeks maximum economic rewards with minimum political risks. This has served China’s interests by enabling it to address regional political and security issues, while maintaining close relations with different nations across the conflict-prone region. The paper points out that the significant changes in the regional security scenario as a result of the Gaza war, particularly Israel’s military triumph and the full backing to its maximalist agenda that it enjoys from the Trump administration portends regional developments that would seriously jeopardise China’s interests, principally the priority attached by the US-Israel alliance to promoting normalisation of Saudi Arabia’s ties with Israel and the attendant isolation of Iran and the emasculation of its military and political capabilities. The paper argues that these developments require China to review its traditional “hedging” approach to the region in favour of competing with the US on the basis of an alternative regional approach founded on close Saudi-Iran ties, which would, over time, culminate in a cooperative regional security arrangement.