Syria Crisis Brings Beijing's Mideast Dilemma in Focus

Reuters
Paramilitary police recruits train at a base in China’s restive Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, in this 2010 file photo.

BEIJING—U.S. threats to launch military strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, citing new evidence that he has used sarin gas against his own people, have presented Beijing with a fresh dilemma.
For decades, the cardinal principle of Chinese foreign policy has been noninterference in the affairs of sovereign states. In the Middle East, that’s led to a series of diplomatic shocks as Chinese foreign-policy mandarins maintain bets on existing regimes, even as their popular support crumbles.
From Moammar Gadhafi, Libya’s megalomaniac former strongman, to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Chinese leaders have stuck with Middle Eastern despots long after atrocities against their own populations helped doom their regimes.

Regime change under any circumstances—even, in Syria’s case, the suspected use of sarin gas—makes Chinese leaders nervous.
Their distaste for toppling strongmen springs partly from a deep sense of insecurity about their own political legitimacy in a country where social unrest is bubbling over everything from pollution to land grabs.
If Western nations can intervene to see off undemocratic governments in the Middle East, Chinese leaders reason, what will stop them from trying to bring down the Chinese Communist government one day?
To be sure, the problems that China faces aren’t remotely similar to those afflicting governments in Middle Eastern countries like Egypt. They stem largely from economic growth that arguably has been too rapid and uneven, not too slow. Unlike many countries in the Middle East, China has scored impressive victories in the fight against poverty. Its economy creates abundant jobs and opportunity.
Still, Chinese security forces reacted with overwhelming force on the streets of Beijing two years ago in response to online calls for protests in support of a “Jasmine Revolution” inspired by the “Arab Spring.” The demonstrations never took off.
More broadly, for China, turmoil in the Middle East has underlined the reality that there’s still only one superpower in today’s world—the U.S.
In his book “China Goes Global,” David Shambaugh, a China scholar at George Washington University, writes: “Real superpowers shape events and produce outcomes. By contrast, China repeatedly takes a low-key, backseat approach in its diplomacy.”
China has no military bases in the Middle East, or troops on the ground. It’s likely to be many years before China can project sustained power beyond its own immediate backyard in East Asia, where it’s pushing back against U.S. dominance with ballistic missiles and submarines, and by building space and cyberwarfare capabilities.
At the same time, China has growing interests in the Middle East. It has invested heavily in oil fields in Iraq and massive construction projects in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and its state-owned companies have packed off tens of thousands of Chinese engineers, geologists and workers to support the projects.
Ironically, the Chinese lack of strategic reach in the Middle East is compounded by a challenge that’s upending the strategic calculus of the region: While the U.S. is growing less dependent on imported energy, including from the Middle East, China’s dependence is growing.
This year, China will overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest net oil importer on a monthly basis, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The gap will grow as U.S. production of shale oil and gas ramps up, and energy conservation kicks in. Meanwhile, an industrializing China will gobble up energy at greater speeds, and while China has been scrambling for new supplies in Africa and Latin America, the Middle East remains an essential supplier.
It’s increasingly clear that picking the wrong side in that region has been costly for China. It’s complicated Beijing’s relations with populist governments that have emerged from the turmoil sweeping the Middle East, and it’s put at risk the prospects of Chinese energy and engineering companies.
More generally, say Western diplomats and foreign policy analysts, China’s instinctive support for the status quo has left it flat-footed as events rapidly unfold. In one crisis after another, China has reacted to initiatives from Washington and other Western powers, despite its aspirations to be seen as a global peer of the U.S.
For instance, China was enraged when its support for limited action by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Libya—a rare instance of the country compromising on its nonintervention principles—turned into an all-out assault on the Gadhafi clan. That may have hardened Beijing’s responses on Syria, say diplomats.
Three times, moreover, China has used its veto in the United Nations to block attempts to isolate the Assad regime, even as a civil war that’s lasted for more than two years rages across the country. The Chinese have joined the Russians to stymie forceful allied intention.
So far, the latest crisis hasn’t left the Chinese as isolated as some past ones have. With the exception of France, no European country has come out unequivocally in favor of military strikes.
Still, the same reflexes are clear. On Monday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that China “noted” the U.S. evidence, although he didn’t evaluate it in any way. “China opposes anyone to use chemical weapons and supports the U.N. to launch an independent, fair, objective and professional investigation,” the spokesman, Hong Lei, told a news briefing.
He added that China “always considers political solution as the only realistic solution to the Syria issue. We are deeply concerned that some countries may take military actions unilaterally.”
Last week, the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, accused unnamed foreign countries of “making a big fuss” about chemical attacks to soften up their citizens for military intervention in Syria. The nationalist-leaning Global Times newspaper accused America of jumping into war and acting as “hastily as tapping a walnut.”
The official Xinhua news agency said U.S. President Barack Obama’s obsession with military options “will lead America astray.”
As the Obama administration tries to drum up congressional support for a strike on Syria, China has grown powerful enough for the U.S. to pay attention to such concerns—but not so strong that it can affect the outcome.
China, writes Mr. Shambaugh, “does not shape international diplomacy, drive other nations’ policies, forge global consensus, or solve problems.”
—Lilian Lin contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Browne at andrew.browne@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared September 3, 2013, on page A9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Beijing’s Mideast Dilemma Reflects Long Policy of Standing Back.

Excerpt from: Syria Crisis Brings Beijing’s Mideast Dilemma in Focus