China-Iran foreign ministers meeting in Wuxi, China on the 14th [중국 외교부 홈피 캡처]
China’s move to expand its influence in the Middle East, where the United States is slowly withdrawing, is accelerating.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met one after another in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, from the 10th to the 14th with the foreign ministers of all six countries, including Turkey and Iran, as well as the four member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.
After meeting with foreign ministers of six countries, Director Wang Yi said, “No democracy is inherently superior in this world. We have to defend it,” he said.
“We understand the reasonable concerns of countries in the Gulf region for regional security, and to this end, China has specifically proposed the establishment of a multilateral dialogue platform in the Gulf region,” he said.
“China will make efforts to gather common perceptions and accumulate conditions for building regional collective security in response to the interests of regional states,” he added.
This is interpreted as the purpose of supporting the establishment of a collective security mechanism among Middle Eastern countries that has excluded the US ‘security umbrella’ while criticizing US intervention in the Middle East.
With the U.S. interest shifting from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region following last year’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, it appears that China is trying to increase its influence over authoritarian countries in the Middle East.
Under this circumstance, the Sunni monarchs in the Gulf region who are trying to prepare for a hegemony with Iran are reducing their dependence on the US by strengthening cooperation not only in the economy but also in the security, military, and energy fields with so-called ‘anti-American camp’ powers such as Russia and China.
On the 14th, Wang Yi also met with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdulahian, another axis in the Middle East along with the Gulf region, to urge the US to make efforts to restore the Iranian nuclear deal.
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