Chinese Navy warships attend an international fleet review to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army Navy on April 23, 2009 off Qingdao in Shandong Province. Fifty-six Chinese subs, destroyers, frigates, missile boats and planes were displayed off the eastern port city of Qingdao just weeks after tensions flared following a naval stand-off with the United States in the South China Sea. AFP PHOTO / POOL / Guang Niu / AFP PHOTO / POOL / GUANG NIU
Originally appeared at ZeroHedge
In a deployment not seen in seven years, three Chinese warships including a guided-missile destroyer warship embarked on a tour of Gulf Arab states for the first time since 2010 in what al Arabiya has called Beijing’s “desire to play a bigger role on the global stage.”
The three Chinese vessels arrived in Qatar’s capital Doha on Saturday following a visit to the Saudi port city of Jeddah, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
While China’s navy regularly tours the world and its ships patrol off the coasts of Yemen and Somalia as part of international anti-piracy operations, such visits to Gulf Arab states, where both the U.S. and Britain have naval bases, are less common. In 2014, China’s navy visited Iran for the first time to take part in joint naval exercises with Saudi Arabia’s regional arch-rival.
Beijing, which relies on the Middle East for oil, has tended to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the United States, Britain, France and Russia. As reported yesterday, for the first time in history, Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia as China’s primary source of oil imports.
Perhaps this fallback option explains why China has been trying to get more involved in gulf diplomacy recently, especially in Syria peace efforts, and has taken tentative steps over the Yemen crisis too.
A senior Chinese diplomat said on Monday that Beijing could be forced to assume a role of world leadership if others step back from that position after U.S. President Donald Trump pledged in his first speech to put “America first.” Naturally such an expansion in China’s global role would include taking tenative steps to declaring who its friends in the gulf region are and, by implication, its enemies.
China has made the right chase board movement. Playing political and military ball in her South China Sea backyard was a bit achaic for the Asian giant. Today’s geopolitical conflict cannot be played within one’s immediate areas of influence. We need to move out into the open seas and spaces and use that language to project our arguments to our real and potential enemies and also strengthen the hand of our allies. America needs everyone to make it great again and Trump must quickly disengage from Taiwan militarily and the far East and strengthen economic rather than military strategy there. Welcome China to the planetary liberation Brigade against globalist NWO imperialists. We cannot accept exclusive zones of Western military presence anywhere on earth or in space any longer!!