China in the Middle East: „Silk Road“ to the Levant

by Mordechai Chaziza and Efraim Karsh
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2021 (view PDF)

„The 2013 launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s 21st-century grand revival of the ancient Silk Road connecting the Far East and Europe, has transformed the Middle East’s geopolitical role in Beijing’s outlook from exclusively an energy supplier into a vital link in the vast transportation and trade network it is vying to construct. As a result, China has evolved from simply an oil and gas consumer into a major economic (and to a lesser extent political) player in the Middle East. China is now the Middle East’s largest foreign investor, with its $155 billion worth of investment in 2013-20 accounting for over 40 percent of the total direct foreign investment in the region during this period.[1]

One of the main beneficiaries of this development has been the Levant, which had previously occupied a marginal place in Beijing’s energy-oriented regional involvement. Investment in Israel, to give a prominent example, has nearly doubled from $6 billion in 2005-13 to $10 billion in 2013-19.[2] But Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey, which lack Israel’s economic and technological prowess, have also benefitted from the BRI as their location at a critical segment of the new Eurasian overland and maritime routes enabled them to integrate into China’s global economic surge, not unlike their role in the historic Silk Road.“ (…)

https://www.meforum.org/62068/china-in-the-middle-east-silk-road-to-the-levant?goal=0_086cfd423c-42dce78092-34071101&mc_cid=42dce78092&mc_eid=f545b2bfa1