The Arab Spring majorly shaped China’s foreign policy to the Middle East, especially that of Xi Jinping, and fourteen years later is still teaching lessons on what it means to be a great power in the Middle East [see my previous paper “Smelling Jasmine in the Arab Spring
Wow, there is so much left unsaid here. Like how one authoritarian regime found it natural to invest in another, but without any sense that a decades long dictatorship and pariah state might not be a good place to send thousands of PRC nationals, particularly when the PRC lacked the means to easily bring them home. If the PRC is committed to investing in brittle regimes where the rest of the international community largely will not then it's going to have to face the possibility of other evacuations that it will not be postured for until the PLA Navy is further developed.
This is exactly what I have been arguing for some time now whenever Chinese point fingers at the US for its intervention: As China becomes more global, it will be harder to maintain that argument.
Wow, there is so much left unsaid here. Like how one authoritarian regime found it natural to invest in another, but without any sense that a decades long dictatorship and pariah state might not be a good place to send thousands of PRC nationals, particularly when the PRC lacked the means to easily bring them home. If the PRC is committed to investing in brittle regimes where the rest of the international community largely will not then it's going to have to face the possibility of other evacuations that it will not be postured for until the PLA Navy is further developed.
Andy, thanks for your insights! One could write a book chapter (and indeed I will one day) on this impact.
This is exactly what I have been arguing for some time now whenever Chinese point fingers at the US for its intervention: As China becomes more global, it will be harder to maintain that argument.