The voices coming from African countries as well as the Middle East in support of China often tend to be ignored. Furthermore, some small pieces of the larger puzzle of Chinese diplomacy are also often under looked, both by scholars and mainstream media. One such area is China’s forum diplomacy with Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. These forums could be seen as agencies for China not only to gather south-south solidarity but also to build political capital from non-western sources. Bloomberg quotedthese forums as China’s fanfare. These forums are a new form of the Chinese approach to multilateralism. Chinese diplomacy has never followed a conventional pattern inside multilateral institutions, as bilateral relations are the main focus even within the realm of multilateral institutions. As Chris Alden and Ana Cristina Alvesargued “Regional forum diplomacy can be seen to be laying the foundation for a parallel international order, one in which Chinese interests hold sway.” These forums held high importance in China’s relationship with developing countries. In 2018, more countries were attending Xi Jinping’s China Africa Summit, than the UN General Assembly that held a few weeks later. Especially, since 2006 Beijing Summit of forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) also decided that political consultations between Chinese and African foreign ministers be held on the sidelines of UN General Assembly sessions held during the year after each Ministerial Conference. The feature has helped to create a bonding between these countries at the United Nations.
Another such forum is China-Arab States Co-operation Forum (CASCF), the ninth ministerial meeting of which was happened on July 6th virtually. ExtraordinaryChina-Africa Solidarity Summit under the auspices of FOCAC also happened a month earlier. Holding of these forums even under a tight period of China-bashing means Chinese pre-planed diplomacy is still on run.
CASCF is a formal dialogue initiative between China and the Arab League (AL) countries with 22 members. It was launched in a 2004 visit by then-President Hu Jintao to the Arab League headquarters in Egypt. Scholars like LinaBenabdallah has argued that CASCF tends to draw lower international attention than FOACAC, as it happened at ministerial level as contrary to the summit level of FOACAC.
The ninth ministerial conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) took place via video link on July 6, co-chaired by China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates AymanSafadi. Both sides adopted the Amman Declaration and an action plan for the forum to deepen cooperation and ties between China and Arab states.
Along with other declarations such as common development, mutual benefit, and win-win results, strive to jointly build a China-Arab community with a shared future in the new era, and make contributions to promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. The joint declaration also stated an interesting point that was to foster a “new type of international relations” featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Which saws Beijing’s effort to draw out political capital from non-Western sources to counter the Western liberal international order.
China also promised to endorse reforms of the UN Security Council to increase the representativeness of developing countries including the Arab nations in the council.
Arab and African countries perpetually think underrepresented in West lead multilateral institutions. China seems to offer a “democratic platform’’ which defies Western hegemony in multilateral institutions more particularly of the US. This gives China the leverage to indulge itself with these developing countries through the regional forums, which means more than just for economic engagement.
In the recent Amman declaration like most of the joint declaration between China and the Arab world, the Arab world voiced their support for the one-China principle and hence, opposes Taiwan’s independence in any form and supports the National Security bill.
Arab League countries, along with some other African countries of FOCAC and other countries of developing world from Asia and Latin America such as Nepal, Pakistan, Myanmar, Cuba, Venezuela all together 53 countries have supported the National Security Law at the UN human rights council. Critics commented that only 27 “free” countries have criticized China over 53 “unfree or partially free” countries.
These are the same countries Ambassadors of which sent a joint letter to the President of the UN Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, where they appreciated China’s contribution to International Human rights cause in late 2019.
Extraordinary China-Africa Summit On Solidarity Against COVID-19 was also held on 17th June. The virtual summit was a joint initiative between the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of South Africa in its capacity as the Chair of the African Union (AU), and the Republic of Senegal in its capacity as the Co-Chair of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). In his keynote President Xi stated that the summit is a concrete step to deliver the commitment that was made at the 2018 Beijing FOCAC Summit. China also promised to cancel the debt of relevant African countries in the form of interest-free government loans that are due to mature by the end of 2020 within the FOCAC framework. The next Forum for Cooperation between Africa and China will be held in 2021 in the Senegalese capital of Dakar.
FOCAC was established in the year 2000. Some Arab and African countries are members of both forums. These forums have a deep impact on China’s diplomacy towards African countries as a whole and it also influences peace and security processes in North African countries. These forums also have their sub forums like in the year 2018; there was a call for China-Africa Peace and Security Forum and China-Africa Law Enforcement and Security Forum.
Even though it is been argued that these forums are China’s effort to integrate with the Middle East for economic reasons, and the success of these forums has been questioned. As EmilianKavalski has argued regardless of these efforts, the conscious and constant manner of interaction with communities of states in the developing world does not necessarily guarantee success. Nevertheless, we cannot deny the effectiveness of these forums as components that challenges the Western idea of multilateralism and the comfort Middle Eastern and African governments perceive to share afore-mentioned platforms with China.
