Special Report: The Crescent and the Star // FAI ONLINE

A demonstrator wearing a mask painted with the colors of the flag of East Turkestan (Muslim-majority area of Western China) and a hand bearing the colors of the Chinese flag attends a protest in of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority on 5 July 2018 (Ozan Kose, AFP, Getty).

A Millennium of Empire

When the great Muslim explorer Ibn Battuta arrived on the shores of China in AD 1345, he was impressed by the grandeur, prosperity and vibrancy of the great Chinese port cities. From the massive shipyards in Quanzhou, to the sprawling lake and colorful fleets of Hangzhou (the largest city in the world at the time), and up the Great Canal to the imperial palace in Beijing, ibn Battuta records his observations in his insightful travelogue. He describes fine Chinese silk as “clothing [worn] even by poor monks and beggars.” Chinese porcelain is “the finest of all makes of pottery.” Even the chickens in China are “bigger than geese in our country.”

Indeed, ibn Battuta was a witness to the world’s largest economy, dominating Eurasian trade for almost 2,000 years along the “Silk Road” land and sea routes, which stretched from Southeast Asia to India, Egypt, and Europe via Constantinople. Chinese culture and economic prowess endured throughout the Greek, Roman, and Islamic periods, dwarfing their Mediterranean and Near Eastern economies. China not only survived the Mongol conquest but subsequently thrived, continuing its trade across the overland silk routes through the Muslim world to Europe until the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1483.

A Century of Humiliation AND TWO DECADES OF REVOLUTION

It was not until the mid-nineteenth century, after a devastating civil war and a series of military defeats at the hands of more technologically advanced world powers, that China was subdued both politically and economically. Forced to concede its wealthiest territories as colonies and “spheres of influence” to Britain, France, Japan, Russia, and others, China languished during its “Century of Humiliation,” which culminated with the “Rape of Nanking” and other wartime atrocities while under imperial Japanese occupation in the 1930s and ’40s.

Therefore, by the end of the Second World War, China was ripe for a nationalist revolution. It came soon afterward in the person of Mao Zedong and his Communist forces under the banner of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). After pushing the Western-backed government of Chiang Kai-Shek off the Chinese mainland in 1949, Mao consolidated his power over the next two decades within the People’s Republic of China. Looking inward, he played on the worst strains of paranoia and xenophobia in Chinese society to affect his brutal economic policies and political repression, making his regime the deadliest of the twentieth century, at an estimated 65 million people murdered or starved to death. It wasn’t until Mao received a visit from an unlikely American president in 1972 that the fortunes of China began to change.

Two Decades of Entente

Richard Nixon landed in Shanghai on February 21, 1972. The US President’s arrival culminated a year of “ping-pong diplomacy” which began with a goodwill tour of the US table tennis team through China. Seizing the opportunity to isolate both the Soviet Union and North Vietnam in the waning years of the Vietnam War, Nixon followed the ping-pong team on a diplomatic mission to meet the ailing Mao and his top officials. It was the beginning of political and economic normalization between the US government and Communist China.

In December 1978, several years after Mao's death, the Chinese government enacted an economic reform program. It was clear that China’s centralized economy was lagging behind its capitalist neighbors in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and so a hybridized system of market economy with state oversight was adopted. The next year, the United States government officially normalized diplomatic relations with China, and the two nations signed a bilateral trade agreement. Over the next four decades, the United States would become China’s second-largest trading partner, with the value of Chinese exports to the US skyrocketing from $4 billion to $600 billion US Dollars. After a century and a half of decline and isolationism, the People’s Republic of China was poised to reclaim its historical title as the world’s economic powerhouse.

“Going Out” into the Middle East

Chinese implementation of “socialist market” reforms in the late 1970s and ’80s included over 100 ambitious building projects, as infrastructure and construction became pillars of the new economy. Manufacturing expanded rapidly as well, and the export of goods became a larger share of the Chinese economy, which by the early 1980s was growing between 5-10% annually.

However, this rapid economic growth also caused a sharp rise in energy consumption. Although China had vast coal reserves, its domestic oil and natural gas reserves were unable to sustain the economic boom, and demand eventually outpaced supply. By 1993, China was a net importer of oil and gas. At the same time, the rapid growth of China’s manufacturing sector required expansion to new consumer markets. Therefore, by the mid-1990s, the Chinese economy revolved around energy imports and goods exports, leading the Chinese government to adopt a policy of zou chu qu, or “going out” in search of new international trading partners, a reversal from the inward-looking and isolationist days of Mao Zedong.

To feed both its growing appetite for energy and its manufacturing output, the Chinese government found ideal trading partners in the Middle East. Arab states were rich in oil and gas, but otherwise economically under-developed, making their economies complementary to the Chinese economy. After September 11, 2001, the United States and its Coalition partners became embroiled in nation-building wars and regional defense projects across Western Asia, providing China with the opportunity to procure oil and gas and to sell goods under the protection of the US military. China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest petroleum importer in 2015, purchasing 40% of its foreign oil from Mideast markets.

In 2011, the first wave of the Arab Spring swept across North Africa and the Middle East, toppling several autocratic regimes and eventually igniting civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Mideast nations which were under-developed or ravaged by war (or both) became prime targets of the Chinese government for infrastructure projects and commercial construction contracts. Providing low-interest loans through national banks, Chinese firms built roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, shipyards, and airports across the Middle East. China is Egypt’s chief partner in the construction of a new port and industrial park along the Red Sea, as well as a new administrative center outside of the capital of Cairo. Egyptian President al-Sisi has visited Beijing six times since taking power in 2014 but has only visited Washington twice.

However, China’s largest Mideast investment is in the Gulf states, where it has become Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner and its largest petroleum customer, contracting the Saudis to build oil refineries inside China which are specially designed to process Saudi crude. Dubai port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a hub of Chinese goods, and the UAE has become China’s second-largest supplier of Mideast petroleum. Both Gulf kingdoms enjoy China’s most highly-favored trade partner status, known as “comprehensive strategic partnerships,” and Chinese technology firms have played a key role in Gulf initiatives to diversify their economies away from dependence on oil and gas. Altogether, bilateral trade between China and Arab states reached $266 billion US dollars in 2019, at an annual growth rate of 9%, which shows no sign of slowing in the near future.

Besides the Arab States, China has also become a primary trading partner and investor in Israel to the tune of more than 16 billion US dollars in 2017, securing contracts to build light rail systems, expand Ashdod and Haifa ports, and operate those ports for 25 years. China’s interest in the Jewish State has expanded beyond infrastructure to include counterterrorism cooperation and other security-related projects as well. At the same time, the Chinese government has also shown special consideration to Israel’s arch-enemy: Iran. As the economy of the Islamic Republic has buckled under the pressure of Western sanctions, China has provided an invaluable lifeline to the ayatollahs, signing a 25-year bilateral trade agreement in 2021 which includes Iranian oil exports to Chinese markets. China has been a primary advocate for Iran in negotiations with the United States and EU powers over the Iranian nuclear program, calling for an end to economic sanctions in return for Iran’s alleged cooperation with international restrictions. Iranian foreign minister Javad Zaif recently called China “a friend for hard times.”

To Western minds, Chinese investment attitudes towards Israel and Iran may seem contradictory. Why would China seek to enrich both Israel and her enemies? The answer lies in the stated policies of the Chinese government, which is not interested in promoting democracy or human rights in the Middle East. That has been the intrinsic goal of Western foreign policy in the region for decades. Rather, the Chinese government is interested in “maintaining balance” in the Mideast, including the improvement of bilateral relations with each individual nation, apart from its policies and actions towards its neighbors. Stability and security are the Chinese priority, not ideals. The upheaval of the Arab Spring opens doors to Chinese investment but does not provide it with long-term partnerships. Therefore, whether it’s doing business with a Gulf monarch, an Israeli Prime Minister, or a radical Supreme Ayatollah, the Chinese government is only concerned with whether a state actor can play the part of a long-term trading partner.

China's amoral diplomacy and trade policy allows it to make inroads to every market across the Mideast region, regardless of the geopolitical landscape. On the other hand, principled diplomacy conversely limit Western nations from doing business with rogue governments such as Iran, Syria, and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, as well as other nations and firms which do business with those regimes. This regional tug-of-war was recently showcased in a stalled arms deal between the United States and the UAE last year, when Washington refused to finalize a deal to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones to the Emirates. The US Government is naturally concerned about the UAE's extensive relationship with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which was banned in the United States due to evidence that the mobile provider was being used by the Chinese government for espionage. The Emirates, like most Gulf states, are wading deep in Chinese-contracted tech projects, such as 5G transition and air traffic control upgrades, and have so far refused to sever ties with Chinese tech companies, even at the loss of top-tier American military hardware. The fact that the Chinese government has found ways to outflank Western governments both politically and economically in the Middle East is a harbinger of China's resurgence as the world's foremost economic power.

A NEW SILK ROAD

Besides an aggressive policy to forge and maintain bilateral relations with individual Mideast nations, China is also gradually implementing a more comprehensive strategy in the region. Shortly after taking office in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced an ambitious new initiative to revive the ancient Silk trading routes. Known as the New Silk Road Belt, or more commonly as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xi’s government outlined an extensive network of roads, railways, seaports, industrial zones, and commercial districts across Asia, Africa, and Europe; all connecting back to the Chinese mainland. Between 2014 and 2017, Chinese banks loaned in excess of $120 billion US dollars to various world governments to begin building the infrastructure of the BRI. Despite a mixed record of success so far, the Chinese government remains resolute. The initiative was written into the Chinese state constitution in 2017, and it continues to gain traction across all three continents. Xi’s administration optimistically predicts that the value of BRI projects will reach 1.2 trillion US dollars by the end of the decade.

In particular, China has focused on a certain leg of the BRI which follows the ancient Eurasian Silk Road route. Beginning in China and stretching through Khazakstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Turkey, and into Central Europe, the land bridge is strikingly similar to the one that ibn Battuta and European explorer Marco Polo traveled in the Middle Ages. China’s investment in Mideast nations along the New Silk Road shows its commitment to the initiative’s success. BRI-related projects now account for around 7% of Khazakstan’s GDP, and more than 8% of Iran’s GDP.

Since 2001, China has been mostly content to exploit diplomatic and economic opportunities in the Middle East, while leaving military ventures to the United States, EU, and Russia. However, as the United States and its Coalition partners gradually draw down their military presence in the region, and as Chinese investment continues to increase across the Middle East’s volatile landscape, Beijing has subtly begun to assert itself in security-related matters. Although Chinese state military expenditures have increased 800% in the last three decades to $245 billion US dollars in 2020, far above the Russian defense budget of $67 billion, China still lags far behind the US government’s $767 billion defense budget. Therefore, rather than engage its military directly in Mideast conflicts, the Chinese government prefers “lead from behind” partnerships, including arms sales, joint defense projects, security consulting, and intelligence sharing, as a means of buttressing existing regimes and maintaining the status quo. Last month, China joined Russia in conducting a second round of joint naval drills with Iran in the Indian Ocean. The drills included elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) conducting naval interdiction exercises, at a time when the Iranian regime has repeatedly threatened to block Western commercial shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, and after repeated incidents of “close contact” between the US and Iranian navies.

THE RISE OF THE CRESCENT AND THE STAR

As Western nations increasingly disengage from the Middle East, and as Chinese investment in the region continues to grow on all fronts, a question arises regarding the long-term consequences and prophetic implications of such a trend. If anything, the last two decades since 9/11 have shown that the Middle East is anything but predictable, and there is no Biblically prophetic role for China by name. However, we do know the general contours of the Mideast prophetic landscape at the end of the age, and there are at least three ways that China’s increasing engagement in the region may enable that scenario:

The substantial and rapid injection of Chinese wealth into the Middle East, which will only continue to increase in the coming decade, creates the economic means by which the “contemptible person” described in Daniel 11 can eventually arise in the region “without warning” and “come into the richest parts of the province” before conducting the most successful and devastating military campaign in human history with a “great army.”
The Chinese effort to interlink Central Asia and the northern nations of the Middle East via the BRI lays the economic groundwork for an eventual “King of the North” politico-military alliance. If that alliance encompasses the historical territory of the Greek Seleucid dynasty described in Daniel 11, it will stretch at least from Turkey to Pakistan, and possibly beyond.
The post-WWII geopolitical order in the Middle East, which had previously fixed the position of Western powers in the region, and which was intrinsically tied to principled diplomacy, has been gradually replaced by an amoral and utilitarian Chinese form of realpolitik. Unconcerned with modern notions of freedom and human rights, this new Sino-Mideast dynamic allows for the rise of just such a “contemptible person” and the expression of his power in political consolidation and warfare, as long as it is good for business. We know that Western nations, represented by the “Ships of Kittim” in Daniel 11, will not be completely impotent against the King of the North. But their intervention at the outset of his second campaign against the King of the South will only be a temporary check on his power, before his “rage” and demonic empowerment enable him to “do as he wills” for a time, both in the nations at-large and inside the “Beautiful Land” itself. Ironically, China may eventually have an eschatological role to play in opposing the Contemptible Man, as “news from the East and North will alarm him” at the height of his reign.

How direct and consequential Chinese engagement in the Middle East will be in the Middle Eastern end-time scenario is yet to be known, much less the timing and progression of events. However, a discerning eye in these matters will give us even more assurance as the Lord continues to arrange the pieces of the eschatological chessboard. Despite the aspirations and efforts of the nations, the Lord’s endgame is decided, as He prepares to gather all nations together around Jerusalem for his Long-Awaited Day, our Blessed Hope.

Maranatha.