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While the U.S. has been ending its military and political entanglement in Iraq, China has quietly been extending its influence there by funding $10.5 billion in new construction projects in 2021.
The initiative is part of China’s strong shift of attention to the Middle East even as it pares back investments in other parts of the world, according to a report by the Green Finance and Development Center at Shanghai’s Fudan University.
The nation’s five-year plan to 2025 cuts capital investment in foreign countries by a third, from $740 billion to $550 billion, but will boost spending in Arab and Mideast nations by 360 percent, largely in energy and transportation projects, the Financial Times said.
China’s new attention to OPEC’s second-largest oil producer comes as Mideast countries see the U.S. as becoming less engaged in the region, the FT reported.
Under the Biden administration, the U.S. ended its combat mission in Iraq and abandoned Afghanistan after a messy exit.
China imports most of its oil from the Mideast; in return, the region is buying a larger share of its technology from China.
Iraq is China’s third-largest oil supplier. Much of China’s investment there has gone to rebuild failing infrastructure after decades of war and the West’s reluctance to invest in a country still rife with political instability.
Now China’s state-owned Sinotech and Power Construction Corporation of China have agreed to build 1,000 schools in Iraq, which will pay for them with revenue from oil exports to China.
Other Chinese-Iraqi projects include building a heavy-oil power plant, restoring the Mansuriya gas field, and rebuilding Nazriya’s airport.
TREND FORECAST: As we have often said, the business of China is business and the business of the U.S. is war and geopolitical gamesmanship (“Top Trends 2021: The Rise of China,” 23 Feb 2021).
What the U.S. destroyed in war, China is rebuilding.
Economic partnership is a far more effective tool of conquest than bombs and bullets. Therefore, China will continue to strengthen its influence throughout Africa, Asia, and the Mideast and Arab world at the expense of the U.S. and other western powers that keep beating their war drums: Ukraine anyone?