Roadblocks and detours aplenty on China’s New Silk Road
South China Morning Post, May 3, 2016
Robert Bianchi says reality is setting in three years after the launch of China’s grandiose plans to unite continents and oceans, as it struggles to cope with the complex diplomacy that comes with it.
“China will have great difficulty convincing others that it can become a world-class mediator as long as it rejects mediation of its own international disputes.”
China, Islam, and New Visions of the Old World
Middle East Institute, Middle East-Asia Project, March 3, 2015
China is steadily reshaping the world’s political and economic landscape by connecting Europe and the Pacific through a series of transcontinental and transoceanic networks that will run across the major Islamic countries of Asia and Africa. The slogan that Beijing uses to promote these projects—“One Belt, One Road”—is a shorthand reference to the Silk Road Economic Belt (the overland routes through Central Asia and the Middle East) and the Maritime Silk Road (the sea lanes joining the Pacific and Indian Oceans with the Mediterranean). In fact, even these grandiose labels understate the true magnitude of China’s ambitions; the total number of planned mega-networks is not two, but seven—and still counting.
https://www.mei.edu/publications/china-islam-and-new-visions-old-world
China’s interests in preserving the Israeli-Palestinian impasse
University of Nottingham China Policy Institute, February 25, 2015
Continued flare ups in Gaza and the West Bank would be far more damaging for the U.S. and the E.U., which are heavily invested in both Israel and Palestine, than for China, which bears little responsibility for the current stalemate.
“Many in Beijing would welcome protracted turmoil in a range of Middle Eastern hotspots because they cripple President Obama’s project to refocus U.S. military resources on the Western Pacific.”
China welcomes Binyamin Netanyahu
Visits from Israeli prime minister and president prompt speculation about China’s possible role as a Middle East mediator.
The Guardian, May 8, 2013
“China has a greater incentive to be more omnipresent in the Middle East – especially as the US starts to sniff around China’s sphere of influence in the Western Pacific.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/08/china-welcomes-binyamin-netanyahu
Türkiye ve Mısır, karşılıklı gerginlikleri gidermek istiyor
Turkey and Egypt Want to Ease Mutual Tensions
Borsa Gündem (Istanbul), December 29, 2017
https://www.borsagundem.com/haber/profesor-bianchi-iliskilerde-normallesme-bekliyor/1257922