Beijing, September 22 – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced a strategic partnership to rebuild a war-torn Syria during the Arab leader’s rare visit to China.
Assad visited China for the first time in almost two decades in an attempt to end over a decade of diplomatic isolation under Western sanctions. His visit takes place as China seeks to advance its influence in the Middle East, where it recently aligned with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
“China opposes interference by external forces in Syria’s internal affairs… and urges all relevant countries to lift illegal unilateral sanctions against Syria,” Xi said in a readout of talks published by Chinese state media. “China supports Syria’s opposition to foreign interference, unilateral bullying … and will support Syria’s reconstruction.”
The United States, the European League, and much of the Arab League called for Assad’s resignation from the presidency in 2011 after he ordered a violent crackdown on Arab Spring protesters during the events of the Syrian revolution, which led to the ongoing Syrian civil war. A series of economic sanctions were imposed in 2011 by the E.U., the U.S., Canada, and Australia as a result of the repression of civilians in the war. Syria regained full membership in the Arab League in May.
As the second largest economy in the world, China has worked to partner with nations that have been historically shunned by the U.S. Assad’s motivation for visiting China was for financial and international legitimacy purposes, the same ones behind his Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) tour earlier this year to the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
Xi announced that a number of initiatives would be implemented aimed at building up infrastructure along the Silk Road and promoting China’s approach to global security. Syria joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2022, which aims to strengthen China’s ties in Asia and Africa by improving regional integration, increasing trade, and stimulating economic growth.
Xi told Assad that China would help Syria to rebuild its ruined economy and counter domestic unrest, by upgrading ties to a “strategic partnership.”
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, over 12 million Syrians remain forcibly displaced in the region, including almost 6.8 million within Syria and 5.4 million living as refugees in neighboring countries. 15.3 million people in Syria will require life-saving aid this year. The country remains the world’s largest refugee crisis.
In August 2023, protests over Syria’s high inflation rate and economic situation in Syria erupted in the city of Al-Suwayda. The protests began with hundreds of participants and grew to thousands of protesters by the next week and spread throughout the country. Protestors chanted slogans demanding the downfall of the Assad government.
In an interview with the New Jersey Times, Dora Guo, a research assistant for Princeton University’s Center on Contemporary China said “China is trying to help countries such as Syria in a very peaceful way. China is continuing to rebuild countries, no matter who’s in position.”
Guo added that Middle Eastern countries are in a “tough place,” where they have to “choose sides between global superpowers. “If it’s not the U.S., it has to be someone else, like China.”
Guo, an expert on China’s influence on the global scale, emphasized China’s want to gain control over the Middle East and its natural resources.
“China has very limited oceanic resources,” Guo said in reference to the Belt and Road Initiative. “The initiative with the Middle East helps China, not only politically, but also economically, and culturally.”
Yan Bennett, the Assistant Director of the Contemporary Center on China, expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with the New Jersey Times.
“Based on trendlines from other Belt and Road Initiative projects, whatever infrastructure or energy investments in Syria will be more beneficial to China than to Syria,” she said. “China makes very one-sided deals with Belt and Road Initiative nations, which favors Chinese trade and investment gains.”
In the readout of the talks, Xi emphasized that this development marks an “important milestone in the history of bilateral relations”.
The meeting took place on Thursday, September 22 in Hangzhou, China.
As Assad returned from China, the U.S. Central Command announced that the U.S. military captured an ISIS official in a helicopter raid in northern Syria over the weekend.
