Leaked news this month that China and Iran had come to the verge of signing a 25-year trade and military partnership agreement struck like a geopolitical storm in Washington — a rising rival of America and a longtime foe joining forces to threaten the United States’s predominant position in the Middle East. [...]
Yet in Iran and China themselves, the reaction was hardly ebullient. Critics of Iran’s beleaguered president, Hassan Rouhani, called the deal a new Treaty of Turkmenchay, after the notorious 1828 accord under which a weakened Persia ceded much of the South Caucasus to the Russian Empire. In Beijing, a government spokesman who was asked about the deal dodged rather than criticize Washington, insisting blandly that Iran is merely one of many countries with which China is “developing normal friendly relations,” and claiming not to have further information about the reported deal. [...]
In recent years, as the United States has been bogged down in unrewarding conflicts in the Middle East, China has been quietly expanding its economic, diplomatic and even military activities in the region. Beijing’s motives are straightforward but varied: It seeks to advance its interests, such as a pressing need for energy imports and for destinations for surplus capital and labor. In practice, it tries to advance President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, which is aimed at reshaping regional economic topographies in China’s favor and counters what Beijing sees as an American effort to contain it. In short, China seeks to establish itself in the eyes of the world — and its own people — as a great power capable of contending with the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment