Feng Li/Getty Images
By EDWARD WONG and CHRIS BUCKLEY
Published: May 8, 2013
BEIJING — China took a modest step into Middle East diplomacy this week, hosting back-to-back visits from Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
But this was not exactly Camp David by the Forbidden City.
The fact that the visits were timed so the two leaders would not meet —
Mr. Abbas left Beijing on Tuesday, and Mr. Netanyahu arrived Wednesday
after a swing through Shanghai — signaled that neither they nor Xi Jinping,
China’s leader, were ready for actual talks. But Mr. Xi did present a
four-point peace proposal to Mr. Abbas, which, though it did not contain
any breakthrough ideas, hinted that China had given some thought to
playing a more energetic, if very limited, role as mediator in one of
the world’s most protracted conflicts.
“As China’s economy, national strength and international status grow,
Arab countries are looking more to China,” said Guo Xiangang, a vice
president of the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing who
follows China’s relations with Middle Eastern nations. “The
expectations they place on China are growing.”
In their meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Li Keqiang of China told Mr. Netanyahu that “the Palestinian
issue is a core issue affecting the peace and stability of the Middle
East, and a peaceful solution reached through dialogue and negotiations
is the only effective answer,” according to Xinhua, the state news
agency.
“As a friend of both Israel and the Palestinians, China has always
maintained an objective and fair stance, and is willing to strive
together with all sides to actively advance the Middle East peace
process,” Mr. Li said.
China has been careful to take a clear and consistent but not strong
stand on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. China has growing trade ties
with Israel — the value of their trade relationship has been estimated
in official Chinese news reports to be nearly $10 billion a year — but
it supports Palestinian statehood and relies on crude oil imports
from Iran and Arab nations to meet its energy needs. About half of
China’s oil imports come from the Middle East, and that dependency is
expected to deepen.
The core of the four-point plan that Mr. Xi presented to Mr. Abbas was
the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, based on the
1967 boundaries and with East Jerusalem as its capital. The plan was a
formal version of China’s traditional stand on the conflict.
At the United Nations, where China sits on the Security Council, Mr.
Abbas has pushed for greater status for the Palestinians, which has
drawn economic reprisals from Israel and has led to a reduction in
donations from foreign supporters. On Tuesday, the Chinese Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said at a news conference that
Israel had to halt the building of settlements in East Jerusalem and the
West Bank, stop violence against innocent civilians and end the
blockade against the Gaza Strip to clear the way for peace talks.
But China’s measured stand on the conflict was evident in some of Mr.
Xi’s comments during his meeting with Mr. Abbas. “Israel’s right to
exist and its reasonable security concerns should be fully respected,”
Mr. Xi said, according to a report by Xinhua.
China’s position is also complicated by its strong support of Iran and various Arab nations. Iran, with its nuclear program,
is one of the greatest security concerns for both Israel and the United
States. China has sided with Russia to try to impede Western proposals
for greater actions against Syria, which is a close ally of Iran and has
been using bloody means to try to stamp out a rebellion.
Syria accused Israel of carrying out airstrikes
last weekend on military targets outside Damascus. Ms. Hua, the Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman, was asked at the news conference Tuesday whether
Chinese leaders would raise the airstrikes with Mr. Netanyahu. “China
and Israel are maintaining communication,” she said.
Despite the spotlight on the visits by Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu,
China is likely to remain a muted political actor in the Middle East,
analysts of the region said. Beijing sees little to gain from being
entangled in distant and often seemingly intractable disputes, said Yin
Gang, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences in Beijing.
“China is a long way from the Middle East, and it can’t even reach a
good solution to its own regional problems: North Korea, the Diaoyu
Islands, the Philippines, Vietnam,” Mr. Yin said. “Even if China becomes
a superpower with an economy on par with the United States’, it still
won’t play a major role in the Middle East.”
China’s ideological flexibility on the Middle East and North Africa was
evident during the recent Libyan revolution. China refused to support
Western-led military support of the rebels fighting Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi, then intensified its relations with the rebels when it
became obvious that Colonel Qaddafi’s government would fall.
Mr. Netanyahu’s talks with Chinese leaders are likely to be dominated by
bilateral issues, including economic ties. The positions of both sides
on Iran’s nuclear program and on the bloodshed in Syria are too clear
and entrenched to expect any shifts from the talks, said Mr. Yin and Mr.
Guo, the two scholars.
“Israel’s biggest concern is still Iran; it worries that Iran will develop nuclear weapons
technology, and it’s looking for the international community to
intensify economic sanctions and other pressure,” Mr. Guo said. “But
China’s position is clear: it opposes military strikes against Iran and
maintains that sanctions need to be measured.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to China is the first by an Israeli leader since
2007. In Shanghai, he visited a memorial to refugees who fled to the
city from the Holocaust in Europe. Xinhua reported that in his meeting
Tuesday with Yang Xiong, the mayor of Shanghai, Mr. Netanyahu said:
“Israel-China cooperation in the fields of science, technology and
manufacturing can result in a perfect partnership. The difference
between cooperating with China and other countries is that the effect
can be more than tenfold, rather than just one- or twofold.”
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