The Chinese-Arab interactions date back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220), and Chinese inventions the compass, gunpowder, paper, and printing, had a profound impact on the Arab world, while Arab advancements in astronomy and calendar systems significantly influenced Chinese society
Hadiths, the Prophet Muhammad‘s sayings and traditions, are the second major source of Muslim religious law and moral guidance. One of the most quoted Hadiths relates to China and the extent to which a Muslim should go to pursue knowledge. The Prophet is believed to have urged his followers to seek knowledge even if they have to travel to far-off China. ‘Seeking knowledge is incumbent upon every Muslim,’ said the Prophet in seventh-century Arabia.
The Prophet challenged entrenched ideas of inequality, ended a cycle of reprisals and warfare to usher in unity, order, peace, and justice by uniting warring tribes, giving them a sense of community, and laying the foundation for the Islamic Golden Age. Pursuing knowledge was key to the meteoric rise of the Arabs, who accelerated the translation of Indian, Syriac, Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Chinese texts under the Abbasid reign, the high point of the Golden Age (eighth to 11th century).
The acquisition of paper-making technology from the Chinese was a major boost to the Arab pursuit of knowledge through mass education, as it prompted. China, which enjoyed global influence over a period coinciding with the rule of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) and the collapse of the Qing (1636–1911 CE), has had a deep civilization imprint on the Arab world.
The Chinese-Arab interaction dates back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220) when Emperor Wu sent his envoy, Zhang Qian, to the region. Wu opened the Silk Road, which facilitated trade and cultural exchanges. In a May 2024 piece in China’s Global Times, Chen Xi wrote about the profound impact of China’s great inventions—the compass, gunpowder, paper, and printing—on the Arab world. Chen wrote that the Chinese language and literature also found their way into Arab lands:
Conversely, Arab advancements in astronomy and calendar systems significantly influenced Chinese society, contributing to its progress and cultural development. Arab merchants who settled in China also played a role in promoting advancements in the natural and social sciences.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which China launched in 2013, has revived exchanges between China and the Arab world. China’s ‘Hundred Schools Project‘ seeks to promote Chinese language education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and familiarise it with China to boost friendship. As many as 171 schools in the UAE offer Chinese language courses to 71,000 students.
In November 2024, the Inter-Civilizational Communication and Global Development Forum in Beijing included a sub-forum on China-Arab civilization exchange. Dignitaries, scholars, and students from over 10 Arab countries and China attended the sub-forum, underscoring the historic cooperation. Ways to enhance cultural exchange were discussed as part of efforts to build a shared future and contribute to global peace and development.
The translations and publications of classical and contemporary Arab and Chinese literary works have promoted cultural exchange and understanding. Syrian poet Adonis and Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s works are among 100 works published in China. Works of Chinese writers such as Lu Wenfu, Tie Ning, and Liu Zhenyun have been translated into Arabic. As many as 70 Chinese publishers, writers, translators, and officials representing 80 Chinese publishing houses participated in the 33rd Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (April 29 to May 5, 2024).
The documentary series In the Footsteps of Travelers (The Road to China), co-produced by China’s Zhejiang Television and Qatar Television, was screened at the sixth China-Arab States Broadcasting and Television Cooperation Forum at Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province in December 2023.
The Contrast
Decades after Israel supported the precursor to Hamas to counter the secular nationalist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas and Fatah, the largest PLO group, signed a declaration in Beijing in July 2024 on ending the years-long rift to strengthen Palestinian unity. The declaration was signed as the US took flak for rolling out a blood-soaked red carpet for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited the US despite presiding over the genocidal war in Gaza.
A day after the inking of the declaration, Netanyahu was greeted with a standing ovation and cheers when he addressed a joint meeting of the US Senate and House of Representatives. It was the record fourth time a foreign leader was given this. British leader Winston Churchill made three such speeches.
The Hamas-Fatah deal was a major boost to China’s role in the Middle East, where the West has spawned many of the problems, and the ambition to be a dominant global actor after Beijing brokered the Iran-Saudi pact in 2023 for resuming diplomatic ties. The US refusal to course correct and its unqualified support to Israel against the Palestinians has since been shot in the arm for China in the region as it seeks to create a new world order on the back of its growing power. Israel and the US have sought to deepen the Iran-Saudi conflict to the detriment of the region.
China’s diplomatic successes in the Middle East have enhanced Beijing’s stature as it seeks to reassert its influence on the global stage as America’s policy of continuing financial and diplomatic support for Israel to massacre Palestinians, mostly women and children, has undermined what the West calls the rules-based world order to China’s advantage.
Reclaiming Lost Glory
Beijing wants to reassert its influence on the global stage, which it lost over a century ago with the collapse of Imperial China. China was a dominant actor in the world for over two millennia, and the Chinese and Arabs forged close links via land and the maritime Silk Road during this time. Zhongguo, or the Middle Kingdom that China calls itself, implies China’s role as the world’s cultural, political, and economic center. It shaped China’s view of norms regulating global cooperation. China’s role in the Middle East now is key to reviving it.
China, with one of the world’s best militaries, has reemerged as a major power over the past two decades. It yearned to regain the global influence it enjoyed until the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (1636–1911 CE). China was a major power until the 1840s before the British ended its regional dominance by defeating it in the Opium Wars in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Other major global powers carved out territories in China with the collapse of the last Chinese dynasty in 1911. Chinese leaders have since been determined to reclaim China’s position as the center of the world.
The World’s Centre
Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president of the Republic of China, founded in 1912, advocated revitalizing the Chinese nation even though the Chinese state was weak then and unable to play a global role. The civil war between Communists and Nationalists weakened China further in the 1930s and 1940s. When China appeared poised to have a role in the new international order after the Second World War, the Communists took power post-civil war in 1949 and rejected it.
The Communists tried to help create an alternative global order. It seemed possible when newly independent former colonies endorsed Premier Zhou Enlai’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and made them the basis for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the 1960s as a counterweight to Western-dominated global governance. In the following decade, Beijing established ties with the US as it returned to the international system in the 1970s. China was soon admitted as one of the five permanent United Nations Security Council members before it opened in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Turning Point
China’s global role increased when Deng Xiaoping succeeded Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, and introduced market reforms. Deng encouraged foreign capital and technology as he oversaw economic reforms, which propelled China’s growth and global reach in the late 1970s and early 1980s. China joined the International Monetary Fund, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the Asian Development Bank. In the early 1990s, Beijing embraced multilateralism and signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1992), the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1996), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1998).
In the noughties, Beijing assumed a greater role in global governance. China became the world’s second-biggest economy, surpassing Japan at the end of the decade in 2010. Over the next decade, it established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) comprising China, Russia, and Central Asian states.
President Xi Jinping has sought to play a bigger role in managing global affairs since becoming the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. He has called for more shared control of global governance and for China to ‘lead the reform of the global governance system with the concepts of fairness and justice.’ Xi wants to transform global institutions to reflect Beijing’s values and priorities.
In an increasingly multipolar world, China can potentially fill the void that the US is leaving by violating the rules it claims to champion. The invitation to war criminal Netanyahu, as he led a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, to address a joint session of Congress was the most flagrant example of this. It would only contribute to enhancing China’s role in the Middle East and the wider Muslim World, where a quarter of the global population resides.
