MER Article China's Strategic Middle Eastern Languages Though the People’s Republic of China has extensive commercial ties in the Middle East, its three strategic partners in the region are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. It is not surprising, therefore, that the major Middle Eastern language programs in China today are Arabic, Persian and Turkish. The g Haiyun Ma, I-wei Jennifer Chang • 5 min read
MER Article Prospects for China's Expanding Role in the Middle East In the autumn of 2011, as the international outcry against Bashar al-Asad intensified, it was impossible for the government of China to avoid being drawn into the conflict in Syria. After China joined Russia in October of that year in vetoing a UN Security Council resolution condemning the brutality Kyle Haddad-Fonda • 12 min read
MER Article Mao in a Muslim Land In the coming years, China is expected to invest some $18 billion in an “economic corridor” crossing Pakistan to the Arabian Sea at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The latest installment is the development of the Pakistani port of Gwadar. The port scheme is a strategic move linked to the restoration Kamran Asdar Ali • 4 min read
MER Article Iranian Maoism As in most other countries, Maoism in Iran emerged in the mid-1960s when Sino-Soviet disputes split the ranks of international communism. But Iranian communism and its Maoist variant were also rooted in domestic developments. During the 1940s, the pro-Soviet (Tudeh) communist party had made signific Afshin Matin-Asgari • 4 min read
MER Article Hadi al-`Alawi, Scion of the Two Civilizations In the 1950s, the People’s Republic of China began to host a small community of Arab scholars and journalists, recruited mostly through “revolutionary” channels like the FLN, the PLO, and the Iraqi and Sudanese Communist Parties. These experts were brought to China with the explicit purpose of editi Mohammed al-Sudairi • 6 min read
MER Article The China-Africa Axis in Relation to Other Regional Axes China and Africa grosso modo are often seen as standing at two ends of the spectrum of developing countries, the former having acquired enormous industrial capacity in short order, and the latter not. In this view, a great potential for exchange exists between the two: manufactures and infrastructur Engseng Ho • 11 min read
MER Article Muslim Activist Encounters in Meiji Japan As one of the political, commercial and intellectual centers of Asia, Japan at the turn of the twentieth century was an important arena for the intersection of ideas about modernism, nationalism and anti-colonial politics. Though Cairo, Istanbul and Mecca had long been the capitals of scholarship an Shuang Wen • 4 min read
MER Article Changing Modes of Political Dialogue Across the Middle East and East Asia, 1880-2010 East Asia’s relationship with the Middle East today is based mainly on economics and is devoid of grand political projects of solidarity and intellectual dialogue. Countries such as China, Japan and Korea present the Middle East with a model of neoliberal economic development. At the same time, the Cemil Aydin • 14 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2014) “Will China dominate the twenty-first century?” So asks the title of a short book by Jonathan Fenby, a British journalist who was editor of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post during the period when that bustling entrepôt was being transferred from British control to the sovereignty of the People’s The Editors • 9 min read
