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 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
Current Analysis Chez Vous, Gitmo to Guangzhou We at MERIP are excited about the issue of Middle East Report on China and the Middle East coming out next week, featuring the work of two of my mentors, Engseng Ho [http://www.merip.org/author/engseng-ho] and MER editor Cemil Aydın [http://history.unc.edu/people/faculty/cemil-ayden/]. The issue wil Darryl Li • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Fall 2012) “In the last decade,” wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the November 2011 Foreign Policy, “our foreign policy has transitioned from dealing with the post-Cold War peace dividend to demanding commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. As those wars wind down, we will need to accelerate efforts to The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article China and the Arabian Sea “As I speak,” said Khalid al-Falih, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco, in an address at Tsinghua University in Beijing in November 2009, “a tanker full of Saudi Aramco petroleum is passing a container ship laden with Chinese manufactured goods bound for the Kingdom’s ports.” As he went on to remin Philip McCrum • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Fall 2010) On July 6, the impish economic historian Niall Ferguson took the podium at the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual seminar series for the rich and powerful on how to remain rich and powerful. Ferguson, as is his wont, began by tweaking the perpetual American reluctance to admit that the United States is The Editors • 4 min read
