As Pax Americana has eroded in the Middle East over the years, Beijing has been availed of a unique opportunity to expand its influence in the region. China has grown in stature as not only a reliable and lucrative economic and trade partner but also a potential regional power balancer and security provider. President Xi Jinping’s visit last week to Saudi Arabia, where he was very warmly welcomed, essentially cemented a serious challenge to the United States on yet another front.
China’s involvement in the Middle East is not new. It has been nurturing good relations with the region’s main actors ever since the Iranian revolution of 1978–79 that toppled the Shah’s pro-Western monarchy and replaced it with the anti-US Islamic government of the monarch’s key religious-political opponent, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
