Only last week, China was pushing itself forward to be the regional eminence grise in the Middle East, the powerbroker driving renewed Palestine-Israeli peace talks. In August this year, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi said that Chinese-mediated detente was driving a ‘wave of reconciliation’ in the Middle East. China’s inflated sense of its influence in the region came to a juddering halt in the light of the horrific attacks on Israel by Hamas militants last weekend.
As a self-declared mediator in the region, China refused to condemn the Isis-style barbarity of Hamas, instead choosing to chide Israel for refusing to enter talks. It called for both sides ‘to remain calm and exercise restraint’. This, in the face of graphic evidence of the brutal slaughter of Israeli civilians is a timid response for an aspiring world leader, but China is merely demonstrating that it has rote-learned the concept of diplomatic impartiality. It is going through the motions to maintain the most sacred of Chinese values: stability.
China’s isolation for much of the 20th century’s post-war period has meant that, in reality, it is rather unworldly
Many years ago, China was one of the first countries to recognise Palestine – unlike America, Germany, France, Italy, UK and others who still refuse to accept its statehood.
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