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Weekend Reads
The Middle East is an integral theater in China’s strategy to displace the United States. Over the past decade, Beijing has steadily tilted the regional balance in its favor by enmeshing itself into the Gulf’s infrastructural, financial, and technological development.
President Donald Trump’s recent visit to the region is the first direct attempt to halt China’s momentum. In a new policy brief, Zineb Riboua explains why the US needs to reestablish itself as the principal outside power shaping the future of the Gulf.
Key Insights
1. The region is important to China for five main reasons.
(1) The Gulf could provide the energy China needs to sustain its industrial economy. Producers in the region supply nearly half of China’s crude imports. (2) The Middle East serves as a geopolitical corridor linking East Asia to Europe and Africa. (3) The region can provide China with capital and opportunities to export its technology. (4) The Middle East can help China undermine US export controls and sanctions regimes. (5) The Middle East gives China operational space to weaken US-led coalitions and discredit American influence. By engaging both US allies in the Gulf and adversaries like Iran, Beijing positions itself as a strategic alternative unconstrained by Washington’s political conditions.
2. China’s growing influence in the Gulf has harmed US interests.
One example of this influence is the collapse of Washington’s sale of F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates. Washington warned Abu Dhabi that the Gulf state’s recently built network of Huawei communications equipment could be used to surveil sensitive F-35 infrastructure. But Abu Dhabi did not comply with the US request to rip and replace the Chinese equipment. Within a year, the $23 billion F-35 deal fell apart, weakening one of America’s most advanced defense partnerships in the region. This disagreement among once-close allies demonstrates Beijing’s long-term strategy. China aims to undermine US influence while avoiding military confrontation by embedding itself in systems that are difficult for host nations to remove and even harder for the US to contest.
3. Trump’s decision to make his first major foreign visit to Riyadh rather than Brussels, London, or Tokyo is a deliberate signal.
The visit indicates that Washington is finally seeing the Middle East as China sees it: a vital theater of strategic competition. The scale of the announcements confirms that message. Saudi Arabia has pledged $600 billion in US-linked investment, including more than $100 billion in arms acquisitions. At the same time, Washington is preparing a deal to provide the kingdom with access to advanced US semiconductors—a move intended to shut China out of future Gulf infrastructure in artificial intelligence, surveillance, and cloud computing. These agreements are part of the administration’s strategy to push back on China’s expanding influence by making digital sovereignty central to US security partnerships. In a region marked by shifting allegiances and strategic uncertainty, the visit underscores Washington’s renewed commitment to shaping the balance of power, not just reacting to it.
Go Deeper
Michael Doran and Bernard Haykel discussed the evolving geopolitical landscape of the Gulf region, the persistent challenge Iran poses, and China’s growing strategic presence in the Middle East.
If the numerous executives accompanying Trump on his Middle East tour can secure agreements with Gulf leaders, the president’s strategy to integrate the region into the American rather than the Chinese tech ecosphere will be in a good place, writes Walter Russell Mead.
Joshua Meservey testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on China’s destabilizing activities in the Horn of Africa.
