Despite zero-Covid woes and a controversial third term, President Xi Jinping's resolve to divest Washington's hegemony before leaving office, came early on 10 March, when an agreement to restore diplomatic relations between arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia had been reached in Beijing.
Indeed, a major for geopolitics since its founding in 1949, China's Middle East detente, which has been lauded as historic while attracting global optimism, has placed some analysts who had downgraded China's role in the region as mere economic expansionism, on the middle ground.
The statesmanship of China, whose foreign policy is ostensibly rooted in non-interventionism, and given its equivocal mediation in the oil-rich and strategic region, has raised global political stakes impetuously.
Firstly, the political dynamics that led to China's dramatic hegemonical aspirations, are undeniably the unpalatable ramifications of the Arab Spring of 2011.
The revolution that undoubtedly brought a spate of political apprehension, and a bout of relief in Western capitals particularly Washington, had immediate winners and losers, as well as eventual losers and winners, Beijing among the latter.
Such is the case following the overthrow of pro-East Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, which had compensated briefly for wounded Western prestige following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, in Egypt.
However, the reversal of geostrategic fortunes vanished when this technologically revolutionised Arab Spring crossed the Red Sea into belligerently-disposed and politically-vulnerable Yemen, the poorest Gulf nation, and ultimately Syria, some 2,340 km away and 569,17 km from Israel, Iran's archenemy.
Meanwhile China, still considered a pure economic powerhouse in the region, watched in awe as Russia, a strong ally, and Iran maneuvered the inhibiting regional landscape against the United States, whose military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq delineated uncontested power.
Thus, the political metamorphosis that saw Damascus, with military assistance from Moscow and Tehran's proxy army the Lebanese Hezbollah, securing the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad against Western-backed rebels who had previously made significant territorial gains.
Again in Yemen's capital San'a, the anti-West Houthi rebels together with Hezbollah, successfully ousted internationally-recognised president and Saudi-backed Abdurabbuh Mansour Hadi, with military weapons from Tehran.
Therein, lie China's stunning geopolitical milestone and plans for the Middle East, resolved auspiciously following the humiliating withdrawal of U.S. troops from Kabul.
Given the negative perception of America in the region, notably one Arab News-YouGov pan-Arab survey conducted in late 2020, on the loathed Obama administration foreign policy, President Xi has utter confidence as a trustworthy mediator.
Additionally, the formal recognition of the Houthi movement by U.S. President Joe Biden on 19 January, 2021, as well as the withdrawal on 4 February, of support for offensive operations for the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015, were both invaluable to the Communists in Beijing.
Today China, as the face of "non-interventionist power," is taking any political risks for economic gains and economic risks for political gains, so as to hasten its monumental Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and absolute hegemonical ascendancy.
Currently, oil-producing Iran and Saudi Arabia are economically more important to Beijing, the largest oil importer in both countries than its rival Washington, in terms of energy needs and security.
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