Thread by @JiangJiang43

“The 1st #ChinaArabSummit means a lot, but China should avoid blind optimism in 2 key points,” said Wu Bingbing, deputy director of the Arabic Language and Culture Department of School of Foreign Languages at Peking University, in a recent interview with Wenhua Zongheng. A Thread

"On the #MiddleEastMatters, China should maintain the diplomatic concept of "positive balance." In turn, it should also realize that the Middle East countries are also engaged in balanced diplomacy between China and the US. At present, the Gulf countries are still very dependent

on the US, so 1) we should not be overly optimistic, and we should not over-exaggerate the interpretation of some friction between the Middle East countries & the US. 2) For some important issues in Sino-Arab cooperation (such as the hotly debated "use Chinese yuan in China-Saudi

oil settlement"), we should also have more comprehensive & prudent thinking, and make adequate policy preparations."... In the economic field, the outside world is very concerned about whether the China-GCC Free Trade Agreement can be reached. Wu believes that the benefits of

building the free trade zone is great, but the difficulties are not small. Because the construction of the China-#GCC Free Trade Zone is not a mere economic and trade issue, but actually involves a deeper political relationship and strategic mutual trust.

The main difficulty at present is the lack of relations and mutual trust between the Gulf countries, and the reconstruction of the trust will take some time..."In the Middle East, there are currently two focal issues: one is the #Palestinian issue, or the Middle East peace issue;

the other is the issue of trans-Gulf security arrangements. By taking these two issues as the main entry point, the core and key of the current Middle East issue is captured...There is now a view that the Palestinian issue is not important in the Middle East anymore and that even

the Arab countries are not concerned about the Palestinian issue. This view is actually inaccurate. The Palestinian issue is a core issue that involves the entire Arab nation and the Islamic world...China is now a thrust to move the Palestinian issue, the Middle East peace issue

, in the right direction and can bring more positive forces to continue to advance the two-state process...What does "positive balance" mean? It means that our cooperation with one party definitely constitutes a certain pressure for the other party; but it is precisely this

pressure that makes the other party's cooperation with us more enhanced. Turning pressure into motivation is a positive balance. Negative balance, on the other hand, is to limit one's cooperation with one party out of fear of affecting the other party, so that instead

the cooperation will be more and more restricted. For example, China signed a 25-year cooperation agreement with Iran, but there is no similar agreement with the Gulf countries, so there is some pressure on the Gulf countries, and they are therefore motivated to further promote

cooperation with China, such as expanding investment and expanding energy trade, and Qatar signed a 27-year gas agreement with China not long ago, and didn't that achieve its effect? ... From the U.S. perspective, it is most certainly concerned first and foremost with the great

political and strategic significance of the summit...The gradual expansion and increase in the autonomy of Middle Eastern countries, especially traditional U.S. partners and allies, means that the U.S. does not have as strong a grip on the Middle East as it once did...

But it is also important to see that the Gulf states currently have limited autonomy and remain deeply dependent on the U.S. for security, finance, and other matters...Now there may be a domestic optimism in China that some time ago the U.S. asked the OPEC+ countries led by

#SaudiArabia to increase oil production, but the OPEC+ ended up cutting production sharply, which sparked a hot debate. In fact, on the issue of whether to increase or reduce oil production, the conflict between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is not as big as one might think.

@JoeBiden's demand for increased oil production is to meet the short-term interests of the mid-term elections while #SaudiArabia decided to reduce production out of the long-term interest of obtaining cash & capital flow. The 2 sides are not at odds and can understand each other.

We have also seen that as the autonomy of the Middle East has increased, and as other powers (including India) have increased their attention to the Middle East, a different kind of importance has come to the fore.

In other words, the importance of the Middle East is not entirely defined and shaped by the United States, but by the interaction of the regional and global landscape, in which China is also a key party.

As I said earlier, if the U.S. advances an exclusive, small multilateral mechanism, it will surely only exacerbate confrontation. In contrast, China is committed to promoting a new inclusive Middle East security architecture, and the idea is clear.

As China has grown to its current size and volume, going global is an inevitable process. Why does China buy so much oil and gas from outside? Why has China become the No.1 trading partner of Arab countries? This is the natural result and inevitable requirement of China's

development to the present stage. And when China has reached this stage and scale of development, issues that were not very relevant to China may now be getting closer, which requires China to participate in global governance.

From the perspective of China's production capacity going out, in the current situation where it is very difficult to dock with Europe and America, turning to developing countries or the Global South is an important strategic direction. The Gulf region is actually a region with

better resource endowment and various capabilities and conditions, which has global significance for the going out of Chinese industries. Enditem

source: mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hj_Ul-L1xMBc…