What Would a Larger Chinese Presence Mean for the Middle East?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Lindsey Ford, Daniel Kliman & more on August 20, 2019

China’s steady expansion of its Middle East footprint and influence poses significant questions for U.S. policymakers. The Middle East has long been a battleground for strategic competition between both regional and global powers. Is it poised to again emerge as a zone of great-power competition, between the United States and China? Or as U.S. policymakers debate how to bring stability to the Middle East, should the United States encourage China’s more active engagement and presence in the region? What are the security implications of China taking a more direct role in Middle Eastern security, or conversely, free-riding on international stabilization efforts?

Alexander Neill

on August 19, 2019

Alexander Neill has been a Shangri-La Dialogue Senior Fellow for Asia Pacific security at IISS-Asia based in Singapore since 2013. He is responsible for developing the Shangri-La Dialogue agenda and research projects focusing on Asia Pacific security issues, particularly on China and its relationships in the region. He works closely with governments and research bodies in the Asia Pacific region.

Neill previously worked as an analyst in the British government, focusing on Asia Pacific security issues, for more than seven years, of which three years were on secondment to the United States Department of Defense in Washington, D.C. Starting in 2005, he served as Head of the Asia Security Programme and Senior Research Fellow for Asia Studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) in London. During his time at RUSI, he developed a program of research focusing on British policy concerns towards Asia’s security and built a network of expertise in the U.K. and Asia. In late 2012, he helped to establish RUSI’s branch office in Tokyo. He has coordinated a number of track-two projects in Asia, including high-level dialogues in Beijing, Pyongyang, Taipei, and Tokyo.

A graduate of London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), he is a Chinese linguist, and has published on Chinese security issues, but also has much wider interests and expertise in Asian security, including counter-terrorism issues, deterrence strategy, and cyber security.

Five More Foreign NGOs De-Register Representative Offices

on August 15, 2019

According to information on the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) website, five foreign NGO representative offices have de-registered in recent months. This makes a total of seven foreign NGOs that registered after the Foreign NGO Law went into effect in January 2017 and subsequently de-registered. Only two foreign NGOs had de-registered their representative offices in the first two years of the law’s implementation.

Emma Ashford

on August 14, 2019

Emma Ashford is a Research Fellow in Defense and Foreign Policy at the Cato Institute, where she works on issues related to grand strategy, U.S.-Middle East policy, and U.S.-Russian relations. She is currently writing a book on the intersection of energy and foreign policy. Her work has been published in scholarly journals such as Strategy Studies Quarterly and the Texas National Security Review, and her opinion pieces have featured in outlets including The New York Times, Vox, and Foreign Policy. Ashford is the co-host of the biweekly podcast Power Problems. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Michael Singh

on August 13, 2019

Michael Singh is a Managing Director and Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is also a Senate-confirmed member of the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace. He was Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the White House from 2007-2008, and a Director on the National Security Council staff from 2005-2007. Earlier, he served as Special Assistant to Secretaries of State Powell and Rice, and at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. Singh co-chaired the Congressionally-appointed Syria Study Group, and served on the Congressional Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States. In addition, he co-chaired Mitt Romney’s State Department transition team in 2012, and served as Middle East advisor to the Romney campaign. Singh has been an Adjunct Fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an Economics Instructor at Harvard College. He also serves on the boards of the Vandenberg Coalition, a network of foreign policy practitioners advancing an internationalist U.S. foreign policy, and of Welcome.US, a bipartisan organization dedicated to assisting refugees. He is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard universities, and lives in Virginia.

Victoria Tin-Bor Hui

on August 12, 2019

Victoria Tin-bor Hui is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and her B.SSc. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Hui’s core research examines the centrality of war in the formation and transformation of “China” in the long span of history. She is the author of War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Hui also studies contentious politics. As a native from Hong Kong, she has written on Hong Kong’s democracy movement for Foreign Affairs, the Journal of Democracy, Monkey Cage, and other outlets.