Syrian dictator Bashar Assad on Thursday traveled to China with his wife Asmaa and a delegation of senior officials, making his first visit to the authoritarian superpower since the beginning of Syria’s civil war 12 years ago.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Assad’s visit was intended to “further deepen political mutual trust and cooperation in various fields between the two countries and push bilateral relations to a new level.” His agenda included meeting with his opposite number, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, and attending the opening ceremony for the Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Xi also came to Hangzhou for the Asian Games, and to meet with an assortment of China’s business partners and allies, including the heads of state from Cambodia, Kuwait, and Nepal. Xi’s business with Assad was the most serious of all, as China is angling for a plum and profitable role in Syria’s postwar reconstruction projects.
Syria formally joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in January 2022, all but guaranteeing China a dominant position in reconstruction. The Assad regime celebrated its induction into BRI as support for the legitimacy of the dictatorship, and a signal that Assad retained full control of his country after winning the long and brutal civil war with Russian and Iranian assistance.
BRI was also Syria’s ticket to shrugging off the effects of Western sanctions, setting up the first great project of the China-Russia-Iran axis of tyranny.
The axis does not care about human rights abuses – from torture dungeons, to deliberate starvation of civilian populations, to chemical weapons in Syria’s case – and stands ready to do business with even the most horrific of regimes, provided they can maintain control over their populations and hold up their end of “bargains” like BRI. Chinese companies raking in fortunes while they rebuild Syria in defiance of international sanctions will be a powerful demonstration of the new world order.
“In his third term, Xi Jinping is seeking to openly challenge the United States, so I don’t think it’s a surprise that he is willing to go against international norms and host a leader like Assad. It will further marginalize China in the world, but he doesn’t care about this,” associate professor Alfred Wu of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy told Reuters on Thursday.
The Assad regime blames all of its current failings, from a dismal economy to nationwide power outages, on those Western sanctions and continued resistance by the Western-supported, Kurdish-led remnants of the uprising.
Some analysts wonder if the threat of becoming entangled in those sanctions, and the danger of ongoing insurgent and terrorist activity, might make Chinese investors a little more reluctant to do business in Syria. Petroleum investors would be the least hesitant, as rapacious China invested billions in Syrian oil before the civil war began, and China is hungrier than ever for both oil and Middle Eastern influence.
China has been able to use its veto power at the U.N. Security Council to thwart eight motions to condemn Assad’s regime, but it has not fully embraced the regime at the diplomatic level, and Assad’s efforts to restore both his economy and regional influence have been sputtering.
China’s state-run Global Times, whose coverage is always pitched to flatter current thinking in Beijing, made a point on Wednesday of quoting Chinese experts who saw Assad’s visit as the beginning of closer relations between Damascus and Beijing:
Assad’s visit to China will be perceived as a sign that China-Syria relations could be restored once again to the level prior to the “Arab Spring,” when the two sides were engaged in a broad range of cooperation and shared a steady friendship between peoples of the two countries, said Yin Gang, a research fellow at the Institute of West-Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
It is expected that Assad will touch on practical cooperation when meeting with Chinese leaders, including the resumption of previous projects such as the construction of reservoirs, oil fields and other infrastructure projects, as well as discussing new potential areas of cooperation, Yin said.
The Assad visit comes at a time when Syria is seeking a new balanced and comprehensive diplomacy in the new historical period, and China is undoubtedly a very important part, Yin told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Yin added that Syria will want China to “facilitate communication with Turkey, Iran and Russia as an independent, neutral major country so as to gradually restore Assad’s central government’s control of the country.”
The Global Times said China, in return, will use its blossoming relationship with Syria to discredit America’s Middle Eastern policy approach once and for all.
“In sharp contrast to the U.S., which has an image of provoker in the Middle East, shirking the responsibility it should have taken, China consistently adheres to solving conflicts through diplomatic dialogue and opposes foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs,” associated professor Wang Jin of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies of Northwest University said.
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