In an unassuming store deep in the heart of Tehran’s covered marketplace, or bazaar, I was chatting with an apprentice. Our conversation was focused on the growing role played by new kitchenware and glassware commercial hubs located outside the bazaar. The animated well-groomed man, who I assumed was in his early 20s, lacked experience, but was a willing interviewee. After a few minutes, however, he redirected our conversation away from my interest in the bazaar’s emerging wholesaling and retailing competitors to several bazaaris within the cavernous historic marketplace sourcing their wares from China.

China is emerging as an important actor in the Middle East. The relationship is becoming more visible through goods, trade, infrastructure, diplomatic summits, and soft power. The literature on China and the Middle East is also expanding rapidly but is primarily focused on state-to-state or state-to-region (Middle East, MENA) relationships. Nevertheless, China’s relationship to the region is not limited to states or regions; in addition to these, China also cultivates and enhances its relationship with non-state actors, political parties, and civil societies.

The politics of COP27 ran along at least three separate tracks: First, there were the ministerial negotiations and meetings taking place in buildings with additional layers of security and all too frequently closed to the regular attendees. Second, there were the activists, NGO representatives and other state and international officials presenting on panels in the main part of the grounds and in the exhibition halls

Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang is an internationally renowned Arabic calligrapher. Born to a Hui Muslim family in 1964, he has been fond of Arabic calligraphy since a teenager, and received systematic and professional training in Egypt and Turkey. In 1997, Haji Noor Deen became the first Chinese Muslim to be awarded the Egyptian Certificate of Arabic Calligraphy and was admitted as a member of the Association of Egyptian Calligraphy

1. 您在上世纪80年代开始学习阿拉伯书法。先是在中国，然后去到中东国家继续深造。您对阿拉伯书法的兴趣是如何开始的?

回民有个习惯。家里办红事时，比如结婚、搬新家，都喜欢在门上贴上阿拉伯文的经文。我们兄弟姊妹多。在我小的时候，大约7、8岁左右，家里总是有人结婚。每次哥哥们结婚的时候，我们都会把门刷黑，请阿訇写阿拉伯文经文，用红纸写上，然后贴在门框上。

The date was 9 March 2021, and the Egyptian president was proclaiming a ‘New Egypt’ – a new republic that would be manifested in a New Administrative Capital (NAC).

China’s global economic influence has had a profound impact on the Arab region, and in this blog I raise some questions around one understudied aspect of this influence: the halal trade.

I first visited Yiwu in 2017 after a Syrian businessman in Shanghai encouraged me to speak to those who, in his opinion, could give me an insight into the true nature of China-Middle East trade.

I spent the spring of 2019 in China, teaching at New York University’s campus in Shanghai. On several occasions during that period I was told that many people in China viewed Jews positively, even if they’d never actually met one.

While the strategic expansion into the Arab region by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), driven by China’s insatiable demand for oil and other natural and strategic resources, has received both scholarly and public attention, there is hardly any research on the growing activities of the BRI’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) sub-initiative, and how they play out in countries of the region.

Over the past two decades, China has become Africa’s most important economic partner, prompting considerable debate on the drivers and impacts of China’s relations in the region.

In January 2022, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain arrived in China for a five-day visit with their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. This collective visit, which also seemingly solidified what policy analysts have been referring to as ‘the Gulf’s eastward turn,’ signaled a potential loosening of American hegemony in the region.

Language is a wide-ranging subject. I would like to use this short blog to share my thoughts about why it is important to consider the Chinese language when we talk about 21st century Sino-Arab relations.