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Visitors at the United Arab Emirates’ pavilion at the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing on September 4 (XINHUA) The world witnessed significant bilateral and multilateral diplomatic activities in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia on December 7-10, namely, the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia, the First China-Arab States Summit and the China-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit. With far-reaching geopolitical and geoeconomic influence, the state visit and the two summits mark the China-Arab states cooperation has been lifted to a new height and represent a new milestone of cooperation on strategy, energy, trade, investment, finance and technology as well as people-to-people exchange between the world’s second largest economy and the Arab world. The Riyadh Declaration of the China- Arab States Summit highlights the following key points: All parties agree to strengthen comprehensive cooperation for joint development, advance the Sino-Arab strategic partnership, adhere to the UN Charter and principles and mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, safeguard the international order and multilateralism based on international laws, reaffirm the Palestine issue as the key issue of the Middle East, support the Global Development Initiative and the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China, jointly build a Sino-Arab community with a shared future in the new era, increase exchange among different societies and respect all countries’ right to independently choose the path of development and social and political systems suited to their national conditions. The declaration also shows strong support for the one-China principle by reaffirming that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory and opposing “Taiwan independence” in all its forms. The China-Arab States China and the Arab world have a long history of friendship and cooperation. By 1990, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had established diplomatic relations with all Arab countries. China always firmly supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Arab countries and supports the just cause of the Palestinian people. The Arab world firmly supports the PRC’s resumption of its legitimate seat in the UN and Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, and firmly opposes foreign interference in China’s internal affairs involving Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Cooperation Forum has achieved fruitful results over the past 18 years since it was founded in 2004. China is the largest trading partner of the Arab League. The two-way trade hit $330.3 billion in 2021, 1.5 times more than 10 years ago. The first 10 months of 2022 saw the two-way trade volume increase by 35.3 percent year on year, hitting $319.3 billion, and almost twice as large as the U.S. trade volume with the Middle East and Africa combined. With close Belt and Road cooperation, mutual direct investment between China and Arab countries reached $27 billion by the end of 2021, a 2.6-time increase in 10 years. As the largest oil supplier of China, Arab countries exported 264 million tons of oil to China in 2021, accounting for 51.4 percent of China’s total imports. China’s cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other members of the GCC has expanded to aerospace, digital technology, clean energy and green development, which is in line with the long-term development plans of the Arab countries, including Vision 2030 of Saudi Arabia. New prospects The First China-Arab States Summit marks a larger scale of China’s cooperation with other developing countries as more cooperation frameworks are established and developed. Established in 2001 in Shanghai, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has enlarged its membership from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as founding members, to India and Pakistan, which were admitted into the organization in 2017, and now to Iran, with Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and others as partner countries. Thus, the SCO covers Central Asia, part of South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. China has also upgraded its strategic partnership with ASEAN during the recent China-ASEAN Summit. The BRICS Summit, held in September, decided to accept new members covering Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America. China also has a regular cooperation mechanism at the ministerial level with Africa—the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation— covering 53 African states and the Africa Union, and one with Latin American and Caribbean countries, namely, the China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum. Before their recent summit, China had a cooperation mechanism with the GCC at the ministerial level. Now, a new cooperation mechanism between China and 22 Arab countries, spanning from West Asia, Middle East to North Africa, has been upgraded to the level of state leaders. The first summit between China and Arab states also marks a significant advancement in South-South cooperation. It makes the global South more closely interconnected. From Arab countries, one can reach eastbound to Asia, south-bound to Sub-Saharan Africa, and westbound to Latin America and the Caribbean, and all way to Pacific Island countries, covering over 100 countries and the overwhelming majority of the world population. This kind of cooperation sets an example for South-South cooperation as it is based on the core principles: strategic partnerships facing the 21st century, adherence to the UN Charter, respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, peaceful cooperation and mutual benefit for building a community with a shared future. During the summit, China and Arab countries clinched a number of large projects, ranging from long-term oil or gas supply, infrastructure projects in Arab countries, digital technology, solar energy to satellite launching. These projects are based on the actual needs of Arab countries, and converge with their own social economic development plans. More importantly, China neither attaches political conditions to the cooperation nor seeks unilateral benefits. The cooperation also helps promote the Belt and Road Initiative and contributes to the realization of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The summit provides a convincing example that South-South cooperation is not limited to low-end technology. In medieval times, the Arab world made great contributions to science, technology and social development. Modern geometry, astronomic science, marine navigation and pharmaceutical sciences, to a large extent, originated from Arab countries. Both the Arab civilization and Chinese civilization have made splendid achievements in history. Today, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and other Arab countries are moving toward modernization with research and application of cutting-edge technologies such as new generations of information technology, digital economy, big data, green energy, and biotechnology. It can be expected that the Arab world will emerge as a new world economic highland and transportation hub in the future. The bilateral cooperation shows that the Global South countries can narrow the development gap with the North through their complementary cooperation. It will, in turn, play an important role in reshaping the world economic order in the future. Their collaboration promotes world peace, multilateralism and a just and equitable international order. The Riyadh Declaration pledges to uphold the international order and multilateralism based on international law, not the U.S. version of “rules-based international order.” What are the international laws? The Riyadh Declaration defines that clearly: the objectives and principles of the UN Charter, including mutual respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, no use of force or threat to use force in international relations, and non-interference affairs of other countries. In comparison, the “rules-based international order” that Washington often talks about implies that the international order is dominated by rule makers who are obviously the West led by the U.S. and it is just a political tool that serves only a small group. The declaration advocates humanity’s common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, while rejecting the double standard of “values” and the use of human rights as a tool to interfere in internal affairs. It also calls for respect for all countries’ own choice in their democratic development and social-political system, in opposition to interference in internal affairs of other countries on the pretext of “democracy.” The summit and its achievements represent the fundamental interests of the vast majority of the developing world, thus serving as a lighthouse in the current turbulent world. Sino-Arab cooperation will certainly develop on a robust track, with increasingly important implications in the years to come. This is an edited excerpt of an article first published on the China Focus website. The author is a researcher with the Center for China and Globalization think tank Comments to yanwei@cicgamericas.com |
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