BOOK
REVIEW West, the Gulf and China in
an oil-fueled
triangle China and the
Persian Gulf, edited by Bryce Wakefield
and Susan Levenstein
Reviewed
by Giorgio Cafiero
China's rise, according
to many analysts, has been the world's most
significant geopolitical and economic development
of the 21st century. Central to China's rise has
been the energy it needs to fuel economic growth.
Importing more than 42% of its crude oil from the
Persian Gulf, Beijing views that region as vital
for this economic development. China's growing
influence in the world's most oil-rich region is
the subject of Bryce Wakefield's and Susan
Levenstein's China and the Persian Gulf:
Implications for the United States.
The contributors - edited by Wilson Center
program associate
Wakefield and program
assistant Susan L. Levenstein - pay particular
attention to China's relations with Saudi Arabia,
Iran and Iraq. Since 2002, Saudi Arabia has been
China's top supplier of crude oil, currently
supplying more than one-fifth of its needs; China
has replaced the United States as Saudi Arabia's
top export partner.
The bilateral
relationship between Beijing and Riyadh is valued
economically and politically in both capitals.
According to Erica Downs in her essay in the
volume, US demand for oil is expected to decrease
over the next 15 years, while China's is expected
to reach 16.3 million barrels per day by 2030,
constituting more than two-fifths of the global
increase in demand for petroleum.
Therefore, Saudi Arabia is convinced that
China is the most reliable partner for "security
of demand". Moreover, in the aftermath of the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
complications in US-Saudi relations, in particular
the West's criticism of Saudi Arabia's
human-rights record, have made closer ties with
China more appealing.
Sino-Iranian ties
are delicate, largely because of Beijing's
perception of Iran as "a tempting but tough place
to do business", writes Downs. Iran is China's
third-largest supplier of crude oil, and the
Islamic Republic's oil and gas fields, which are
open to foreign investment, do attract Chinese oil
firms. However, Downs concludes that
Western-imposed sanctions on Iran have pressured
China to act cautiously when assessing the value
of its ties to Iran as compared with Saudi Arabia.
From Tehran's perspective, there is much incentive
to lure China's oil companies into Iran to
demonstrate the Western-imposed sanctions'
ineffectiveness.
China, like the West,
does not want to see Iran develop a nuclear
weapon. Nonetheless, Beijing is suspicious of the
real US and European interests in Iran and has
therefore not cooperated with Western efforts to
isolate Tehran.
China sees Iraq and its
115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves as a
"land of opportunity", according to Downs. Iraq is
planning a major expansion of its oil production,
and its oil ministry has offered three of 11 major
contracts to Chinese companies. Afshin Molavi
labels China an "unlikely winner" of Washington's
2003 invasion of Iraq. A joint partnership between
China National Petroleum Corp and British
Petroleum over the enormous Rumaila oilfield has
the potential to make Iraq China's new top
supplier of crude oil within eight years,
surpassing Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Jon
Alterman believes that interdependency defines the
triangular relationship of the United States,
China and the Persian Gulf. The United States
Pacific Command (PACOM) is the largest US command,
and it focuses on China. However, US-China trade
is the second-largest in the world, and China
possesses leverage over America's economy, holding
almost US$1 trillion in US debt.
US-Gulf
relations are largely security-oriented, as
Washington sells billions of dollars of arms to
the region's governments each year and has
established military bases in all Gulf Cooperation
Council countries, save Saudi Arabia (the others
being the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Quatar and
Kuwait.
Last, Sino-Gulf relationships are
defined primarily by Middle Eastern demand for
Chinese construction and manufactured goods and
China's thirst for the Gulf's non-renewable
natural resources.
China and the Gulf
states can't force the United States out of the
Persian Gulf, nor can the United States and Gulf
states remove China. At the same time, Washington
and Beijing are not positioned to squeeze the
Middle Eastern oil producers, as the global
economy is far too reliant on Persian Gulf oil.
Alterman concludes that the three actors share a
mutual interest in maintaining stability in the
Gulf and continuing the free flow of energy.
Washington's "goal should not be to deny the
triangle", he writes, "but instead to embrace it".
The contributors to China and the
Persian Gulf concur that China is increasingly
important to the Gulf states and vice versa.
Moreover, Beijing has replaced the ideological
foreign-policy pursuits of the Mao Zedong era with
self-calculating, shrewd, and cautious strategies.
Although it does not seek to rival the
United States as the region's dominant military
power, China may take advantage of US dilemmas in
the region to pursue its own agenda by evading
US-imposed sanctions and directly dealing with
energy-rich states that the United States seeks to
isolate, such as Iran, to acquire valuable assets
and play spoiler. In this inescapable triangle,
China, the United States and the Persian Gulf are
all in tension, but in the end they all need each
other, too.
China and the Persian Gulf,
Implications for the United States, ed Bryce
Wakefield and Susan Levenstein, is published by
the Wilson Center, Washington DC. Send an email to
asia@wilsoncenter.org for a free copy or click here for a free PDF
version.
Giorgio Cafiero
is a contibutor to Foreign Policy in Focus
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