China is making connections across the globe, and international analyst Jon Alterman said it’s important to keep a close eye on what these relationships will mean in the coming years.
Alterman discussed China’s newfound confidence during a Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pekingology podcast. He spoke with Bonny Lin, director of the China Power Project and a senior fellow on Asian security.
Alterman is the director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' (CSIS) Middle East program. Prior to joining CSIS, Alterman spent 10 years as a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel, and he has also worked in policy planning for the U.S. State Department.
Jon Alterman, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Middle East program.
| Center for Strategic and International Studies
“In the last five years, China has become a lot more self-assured," Alterman said. "The Belt and Road Initiative, in many ways, was a spectacularly successful branding exercise because all of these Middle Eastern states said China is a hugely growing power in the world and we can find a way to make ourselves central to the Chinese strategy. And five, six years ago, I saw all sorts of Middle Eastern states thinking about ways to make themselves the hub of the Belt and Road effort in the Middle East.
“Up to now China has principally been interested in economic relations with the Middle East and has sought not to aggravate the U.S. military presence," he added. "I'm told that China, in the last year or maybe two, has started to have more security discussions with Middle Eastern countries. And increasingly in recent years, because of a sense that the U.S. was not as committed to the Middle East as it had been in previous years. There is a sense that on the Middle Eastern side, they need to develop a deeper relationship with China, and they’re interested in seeing what that might look like.”
Alterman said the nations that are connecting with China are doing so for a variety of reasons.
"[Countries like Egypt are] interested in exploring a relationship with China, partly because they think they can get things from China, partly because they want the United States to be a little bit jealous and they like to play one side off against the other,” he said. “Some of the Gulf states say, ‘Look, it's just business.’ If you look at where energy demand growth is coming from, it's coming from China. If you look at where our imports are growing, the United States is not a net oil importer anymore, but China is.”
Indeed, China leads the world in oil imports.
Alterman said the U.S. needs to develop a more reasonable plan to compete with this new, more aggressive China. There is nothing effective currently in place, he said.
He said what most bothers him is the U.S. approach to growing Chinese influence, as the United States has to counter everything China does by doing bigger and better, Alterman said.
He added, “There's no sense of prioritization. There's no sense of nuance. We can spend ourselves silly trying to beat China at everything. And it seems to me we have to be more selective, both in terms of sectors, in terms of countries that we care about. We need to be more willing to calculate the balance of pluses and minuses in a relationship. We still see the world through this Cold War prism of two sides, and I don't think that world is coming back."
China understands that, and has been forming strong partnerships with countries across the globe, he noted.
Alterman said China will “leave the United States to making good friends and hostile enemies and everything else. And they'll just try to do business with whomever they can do business with. There's a lot of interest in the Chinese experience in getting away from the American insistence that if you want economic transformation, it requires social and political transformation to go along with it.”
China has become Africa's biggest trade partner over the last decade, sourcing key natural resources from countries across the continent, according to a June 2022 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
SMB-Winning Consortium is comprised of private Chinese corporations and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). It has been operating in Guinea since 2014 as one of Guinea's top mineral exporters. Through SMB-Winning, China has secured access to bauxite, critical in aluminum production as well as iron ore, which is used in making steel. Guinea is the world's top bauxite producer, and China is the world's top aluminum producer.
China was able to secure its position in Guinea in part by promising to expand infrastructure in the region. Chinese SOEs constructed Guinea’s “first modern railway,” the Dapilon–Santou line, which began operating last year. In 2017 the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) signed a 20-year agreement with Guinea's government, loaning them $20 billion (almost double Guinea's GDP that year) for infrastructure development, to be repaid in the form of mining revenue.
"ICBC’s agreement with the Guinean government demonstrates how state financing can help position Chinese companies to seek advantage in strategic sectors," according to the report.
China signed an agreement with the Solomon Islands in April that reportedly will enable Chinese warships to stop and refuel in the Solomon Islands, State Newswire previously reported. The agreement will also reportedly allow Chinese military personnel to assist with maintaining order in the island nation.
Over the last two decades, China surpassed the U.S. as South America's top trading partner, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Chinese SOEs have invested in infrastructure and other development in countries including Brazil and Venezuela, while increasing China's diplomatic, cultural and military presence there. Twenty Latin American countries have agreed to participate in China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Alterman said the United States can remain the leading global economic superpower, but it should realize where its strengths and weaknesses are, and work on both. The U.S. still has tremendous assets and advantages to employ.
"I think the Chinese are very aware of what our strengths are,” he said. “But we sort of aren't aware of our strengths. And we keep beating ourselves up about what we can't do, won't do, shouldn't do, all those things. I think there are positive things we can do that would advance our interests, which play to our strengths, which we need to accentuate.
“But we have to be thinking more strategically about what we're trying to do and what we bring to the table and how much influence we have by virtue of the investments we've made, by virtue of the model we represent, by virtue of our economic, military, political, diplomatic, intelligence, strength,” Alterman said. “I'm not saying we should rest on our laurels, but let's be accurate about just how much we bring to the table. And don't be embarrassed about it. Let's be fair-minded about what we have to offer, our willingness to offer it freely and how we can do so in a way that advances American interests."
