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Opinion | China’s rush to fill power vacuum in Iraq could backfire
- China is seizing an opportunity in the Middle East to improve its energy security and global influence, with Iraq a particular beneficiary
- This push has its risks, though, and Beijing’s neutrality will face challenges in a region fraught with long-standing rivalries and competing interests
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Chinese firms recently won the lion’s share of licences for oil and gas exploration that Iraq solicited to wean its power plants off natural gas from Iran.
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The news demonstrates China’s drive to secure energy supplies as it struggles to reverse slowing growth at home. Beijing is seizing opportunities in the Middle East left by the West’s conflicting ambitions to deter foes and reassure allies. Wang Yi, China’s chief diplomat, has doubled down on the government’s pro-Palestinian stance.
Meanwhile, American and European companies are apprehensive about making long-term investments in war-ravaged countries with rampant corruption despite these nations’ lucrative reserves of gas and oil. They aren’t competing with China for oil contracts. Americans gave lives, time and money yet China is benefiting.
But China’s strategy in Iraq could prove to be a negative-sum game on many fronts – political, trade, influence and more – given the power dynamics in the region.
Many treacherous hazards confront statecraft, as the United States and Europe well know. China will face challenges in Iraq that are the result of antagonisms that have deepened over the past few centuries. The late US statesman Henry Kissinger wrote in 2014 that in the Middle East “political, sectarian, tribal, territorial, ideological, and traditional national interest disputes merge”.
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Today, the war in Gaza promises an impossible outcome. Throughout the Middle East, terrorism erupts in societies roiled by deep-seated religious tensions that unstable governments cannot defuse. Gulf countries are rising in power and ambition as they assert their independence.
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