WASHINGTON — Beijing is likely to use the Israel-Hamas war to try to diminish Washington’s global influence while boosting its own, said analysts.
China has been bitterly attacking the U.S. on its state media over the conflict raging in the Middle East, saying Washington’s one-sided military support for Israel is fueling tensions and increasing the humanitarian crisis in the region.
“If Washington really wants to mediate the crisis, it should sit both sides down for negotiations, instead of sending warships to the Middle East to boost Israel’s morale,” said a Chinese expert quoted Thursday by the Global Times, one of Beijing’s official news outlets.
Dennis Wilder, who served as National Security Council director from 2004-05 during the George W. Bush administration, said, “China is regrettably using the crisis to reinforce its domestic propaganda that paints the United States as supporting an Israel that has denied the Palestinian people their right to their own state.”
David Satterfield, director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said, “China is endlessly opportunistic, by which I mean, it seeks occasions, places, opportunities to advance the perception of its global reach, in particular, its desire to be seen as an ally, a partner, a friend of what we might call the Global South.”
Satterfield, who served as acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from 2017-19 during the Trump administration, continued, “China does quite a good job of this in a theatrical sense, in an optical sense.”
But in reality, he said, “in this conflict, and I would say in the Middle East more broadly, it has very, very little influence.”
Satterfield said China’s policy focus on nonintervention “catches Beijing in a box, if you will. The Chinese can’t become a meaningful player because they’re fearful if they take a real stance as opposed to rhetorical positions on this, [it] could someday come home to affect them.”
At the daily Chinese Foreign Ministry press briefing on Thursday, spokesperson Wang Wenbin called for both sides in the Gaza crisis to put an “end to the violence, condemn actions against civilians,” and “avoid further escalation.”
Source : VOA News
