Gaining weight
Arab officials hope that renewed relations with China will give the region more clout, politically and economically, Dina Ezzat reports
A new Arab-Chinese Forum (ACF) was launched this week. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and Chinese President Hu Jintao declared the creation of the ACF on Friday morning, at the end of a rare visit by the Chinese head of state to the Arab organisation. "This forum will mark a new phase in long and friendly Arab-Chinese relations," Moussa said in a joint press conference with the Chinese foreign minister on Friday.
Both Arab League and Chinese officials expressed confidence and resolve to make the ACF work to serve the joint interests of Arab countries and China. Both sides described their relationship as an old friendship that just needed to be revitalised after years of inactivity.
Beijing has had diplomatic links with most key Arab states since the mid-1950s. However, over the past few years, these ties have failed to yield any significant dividends. In the early 1990s, Arab-Chinese relations went through an especially rocky phase as Beijing moved towards establishing a closer diplomatic relationship with Israel. "At the time Chinese ambassadors in many Arab capitals had to answer a few questions over the impact of growing Tel Aviv-Beijing ties on traditional Arab-Chinese relations," an Egyptian diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Later, China and the Arab countries started actively to reinvigorate their alliance. In 1993, Arab countries decided to open a permanent mission for the Arab League in Beijing. Several other steps followed on both sides, indicating that the traditional alliance remained firm, regardless of Chinese-Israeli relations. From 1998 onwards, the Arab Council of Foreign Ministers adopted a regular resolution on the necessity of improving Arab-Chinese relations. The five-country Middle East tour by then Chinese President Jiang Zemin in 2000 was a particularly significant move.
The establishment of the ACF last week, little over a month after a week-long visit to China by Israeli President Moshe Katsav, was described by the Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing as "a very important step [towards cementing] Arab-Chinese relations". In the coming months -- possibly in June 2004 -- Moussa will travel to Beijing to celebrate the initiation of the various ACF projects. "We, Arabs and Chinese, have a common objective here. We want to strengthen our political relations on the basis of mutual respect; we want to intensify economic and information technology cooperation; we want to strengthen the cultural bridges that have often brought us together; and above all we want to work together to serve the purposes of world peace," said Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz, head of the Communications Department at the Arab League.
"There is so much that we could build on. We see no reason why we should not consolidate our cooperation when we have so many common objectives," he added.
International political equity and global economic justice are two objectives that China and Arab countries should together work to achieve, agreed Zhaoxing. "We both belong to the developing world. We both want to make sure that the rapid developments and increasing challenges on the international political scene do not compromise our interests. We also want to make sure that the world will not lose sight of economic justice in these times when the gap between the north and south is getting bigger," he said.
In practice, however, economic cooperation may prove easier to achieve than political teamwork. Over the last decade, trade exchange between China and Arab countries has steadily risen. In 2003, the Arab-Chinese trade volume totalled $25.4 billion, rendering Arab countries China's sixth most important trade partner today. On the other hand, at the joint press conference, Zhaoxing notably avoided making any clear denunciation of Israeli military raids on Palestinian cities, or of the UN-declared illegal construction by Israel of a separation wall in the occupied Palestinian territories. "The Chinese government will always support the legitimate cause of the Arab peoples," was the best that Chinese diplomacy could offer to an array of Arab correspondents' questions on the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.
Arab officials, for their part, noting that China is the only developing country among the permanent members of the UN Security Council, express hope that the regular political consultations that will be conducted under the umbrella of the ACF will provide means for both sides to better understand their differences, as well as their similarities, regarding matters of common interest.
