US Imperialism at Risk? Rising Chinese-Egyptian Cooperation
In January 2024, Egypt formally became one of the newest members of BRICS. An acronym for its founding emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), BRICS is an international organization that promotes cooperation between its members in various domains and is one of the most prominent examples of South-led cooperation. Egypt’s accession, alongside other countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, came as part of Chinese efforts to expand BRICS membership in favor of a broader BRICS+. It was also against the backdrop of Egypt’s acceptance as a member of BRICS’ New Development Bank in 2023.
Egypt’s BRICS membership is an example of the strengthening of Chinese-Egyptian relations since 2014 and China’s rising influence in the region more broadly. Though one of the closest US allies in the Middle East since at the 1970s, with a dependence on US aid and western financing, Egypt has increasingly leaned towards China over the past decade. This should not imply a break in Egypt’s relations with (or dependence on) the United States (US) nor is it simply a case of great power rivalry, geopolitics or rising multipolarity. Instead, this cooperation is merely the latest iteration of challenges to US power in the region since at least 2011.
While various analyses have looked at Chinese increased involvement in the Middle East, specifically through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),[1] to understand the motivations behind it and its implications for US-Chinese rivalry at the global level,[2] I am more interested in taking a closer look at what Chinese involvement in the Middle East, specifically in Egypt, indicates for American interests. I use it as a window for understanding the region’s changing political economic dynamics since 2011, as well as its implications for the future.
US’s influence and imperialism in Egypt
At the end of the Second World War, the US effectively replaced Great Britain as global power, including in the Middle East.[3] From the start, the US has established and exercised this dominance through exploitative and subordinate relations with other countries and economies that allowed it to advance its political and economic interests, in what might be understood as a form of imperialism.[4] Such interests included, among others, maintaining global currency dominance with the USD, expanding its finance-led capitalist model at a global level and opening up access to new markets and cheap pools of labor for its businesses. In the Middle East, the US exercised this imperial power through a variety of means, from the use of direct force and CIA-backed coups (i.e. to ensure continued and favorable access to oil resources in Iraq and Iran in the 1950s) to aid and development packages, which helped forge (or force?) alliances with client states in the region as well as extended debt relations that further subordinated them to American interests.[5]
Egypt has been particularly central to US imperial relations in the region. It was arguably the US’s lack of support for the Tripartite Aggression of 1956 (when Britain, France and Israel joined forces to occupy Egypt a after Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal) and its pressure to end the ‘crisis’ that cemented its position as dominant power at the regional and global levels. While the Cold War brought some competition from the USSR, threatening American power in the region, and giving rise to initiatives like the Non-Aligned Movement in which Egypt’s Nasser was a founder, this was short-lived—by the 1980s, if not before, the US had become the largely uncontested power in the Middle East (with few exceptions), including in Egypt.
With Sadat becoming president after Nasser’s death, Egypt more firmly transitioned to the American-led western camp. The US-sponsored Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1977 sealed this realignment and made Egypt the second-largest recipient of US military aid after Israel (today, it ranks third after Israel and Jordan). Subsequent aid packages and IMF loans only strengthened these relations. Sadat’s infitah (or open-door) policies, rolled out over the 1970s, embraced the structural reforms and policies dictated Western financial institutions, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This included subsidy cuts and price hikes that first triggered public resistance in the 1977 Bread Protests. Egypt’s realignment became further pronounced with its military support for the US-led coalition against Iraq in the Second Gulf War, for which it was rewarded significant debt cancelation by Western creditors. Though it provided welcome debt relief, this also reflected the extent of Egypt’s ties and subordination to American interests in the region.
Despite the persistence of these strong ties to the US and their influence on Egyptian politics and economy throughout the 2000s, they were not without challenges. The first cracks began to appear with the turn of the century. Like elsewhere in the Middle East, public support for the Second Palestinian Intifada and indignation at American support for Israel triggered wide-scale protests and gave voice to strong anti-American sentiments at the popular level. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 added fuel to the fire. Mass demonstrations erupted on college campuses and in public spaces in opposition of the occupation, with protestors burning American and Israeli flags.[6] While this popular resistance did not significantly change the Egyptian state’s position—in fact, the state was instrumental in disciplining and containing these protests—it reflected the growing fragility of US influence and interests in the region. The global reverberations of the 2007 financial crisis and the eruption of mass uprisings across the Middle East in 2010/2011 would only exacerbate this further.
Challenges to US Imperialism, post-2011
Though ostensibly targeted at their respective states and ruling classes, the 2011 uprisings constituted explicit resistance to global power relations and continuing American imperialism in Egypt and the region. Egyptian protestors’ demands for ‘Bread, Freedom and Social Justice’ directly opposed decades of IMF-mandated austerity policies and privatizations, which had concentrated wealth in the hands of a few and deepened socioeconomic gaps and grievances. The financial crisis and rising global food prices in the second half of the 2000s had sharply accentuated these gaps and further impoverished millions of Egyptians despite peaking GDP growth on paper.[7] It is thus unsurprising that protestors explicitly denounced institutions, like the IMF and World Bank, as reflections of American power and interests. At the political level, protestors rejected both the state’s brutal use of force and its subordination to American interests. Against this backdrop, protestors’ chants against the United States, their depictions of then-President Mubarak as an American puppet and their sit-in at the Israeli Embassy in September 2011 were similarly in line with their broader demands for freedom and social justice.
The uprisings signalled a crisis for US political and economic interests in Egypt and the region, one that has yet to be fully resolved. Even as the US positioned itself as a key supporter of the uprisings’ demands,[8] the uprisings significantly threatened its pre-2011 power and the influence of American-backed western institutions. In fact, it was not until 2015 that the IMF, for example, was able to resume its operations and extend new financial packages to Egypt.[9] The state’s subsequent acceleration of IMF-led economic restructuring since 2016 has not necessarily made things better. Civil society organizations point to Egypt’s unprecedented debt levels, dramatic currency devaluation since 2016 and austerity levels, highlighting their direct relation to IMF loans and implications for reduced socioeconomic spending and worsening inflation and living conditions.[10] US support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza post-October 7, its reported push to displace Palestinians to Egypt and its most recent aggression against Iran have further aggravated anti-American popular sentiments.
While Egypt ostensibly remains one of the key American allies in the region, its broadening of its alliances through the BRICS reveals growing cracks in the US’s regional dominance at various levels. Egypt’s strengthening cooperation with China indicates how these challenges to American political and economic interests are not solely at the popular level, but might also be surfacing at the state level to varying degrees.
Chinese Cooperation as the Latest Reflection of Crisis
At a time when other American allies in the region are strengthening their military and security arrangements with the United States, including through arms deals and joint defensive programs[11], Egypt has moved to broaden its alliances. In addition to its accession to BRICS, for example, Egypt has made efforts to diversify the sources of its military procurement. While it remains one of the largest recipients of US military aid, Egypt has sought to acquire more advanced fighter jets from France, Russia and China on different occasions, after the US reportedly denied its requests.[12] The agreement to buy jets from China has not been confirmed to date (except by this Daily News report), but reports surrounding it, as well as Egypt’s joint military exercises with China[13][14], reflect a move away from complete military dependence on the United States. There is more to this than the obvious strategic calculations given, for example, historical precedents of the US decreasing arms transfers to Egypt in 2013 and increasing Egyptian vulnerability vis-à-vis Israel, particularly in light of the most regional developments and reports of pressures on Egypt to accept Palestinian displacement.[15]
Egypt’s “efforts to deepen defence ties with China and strengthen joint military capabilities” more importantly indicate regional American allies’ willingness to prioritize their own interests even when they contradict those of the US.[16] While the US seemingly strengthens its hold in the region, with deeper ties to Gulf states and more support for Israel, Egypt’s move towards China directly reveals threats to America’s uncontested political dominance in the region, offering more room to emerging global powers. It also challenges reliance on the American arms industry and the US’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s military supremacy in the region. This is not to completely negate or diminish the strength of American power—the US stills maintains significant leverage over its allies, such as in its threat to impose sanctions if Egypt acquired arms from Russia[17]—but to highlight deepening fissures in the US’s once-uncontested regional dominance and ability to advance and safeguard its own economic and political interests.
Egypt’s growing economic cooperation with China further highlights challenges to the US’s imperial hold in the Middle East. In addition to China’s position as Egypt’s largest trading partner since 2013, both countries have sought to deepen their economic cooperation, first signing a strategic partnership agreement in 2014, followed by another Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (2024-2028) a decade later. More specifically, China has actively supported various infrastructure and development projects in Egypt over the past few years with investments in sectors as diverse as manufacturing, communication, transport and renewable energy, as well as the development of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, a key node in China’s BRI.[18] Investments worth $28.5USD in 2018-2019 put Egypt as the largest beneficiary of Chinese investment in the region.[19]
While Egypt remains reliant on American aid and heavily indebted to western financial institutions (most notably the IMF), its accession to BRICS+ and membership in the New Development Bank offer opportunities for broadening its economic and financial relations beyond the US and western institutions. This includes access to BRICS members’ large and growing markets as well as increased and more favorable financing for its infrastructure and development projects. This directly challenges western institutions’ near monopoly on aid and development funding in Egypt, which have historically advanced American economic and political agendas.[20] In fact, analyses in Egyptian government-published periodicals explicitly frame Egypt’s BRICS and NDB membership as “a significant step towards gradually decoupling from the US dollar…especially if a system of trade in local currencies or barter agreements is established with BRICS” as well as “reducing the predominance of the US dollar and the IMF and World Bank in Egyptian economic decisions”.[21] Analyses of Chinese-Egyptian relations in the same publication further emphasize how “China’s non-interventionist approach” allows Egypt to maintain control over its economic development, whilst reducing its dependence on western financing.[22] On a smaller scale, Chinese infrastructure investments have provided mechanisms for rent-seeking and helped consolidate the stability and control of Egypt’s ruling classes,[23] offering yet another alternative for American financial and political support.
Concluding thoughts
While the United States cannot be said to have been dethroned as reigning global power in the Middle East, its longstanding imperial interests in the region have been significantly threatened over the last 15 years. China’s rapid and growing involvement in the Middle East is the latest iteration of these threats, but by no means the only or first one. In Egypt, it comes at the heels of preexisting challenges to the US’s historically strong hold over the country, at the popular level, but also with the Egyptian state at different moments. While it is important not to overstate these challenges as they stand today, especially at the level of the state, it is equally important to consider what they could mean for the region’s future and the US’s role within it. This is even more salient in light of its ongoing aggression on Iran, the position of different states in the region within it and the challenges and questions the current situation poses.
[1]https://www.diplomaticourier.com/posts/a-decade-of-belt-and-road-in-the-middle-east
[2]https://mei.edu/publication/chinas-model-of-power-projection-in-the-middle-east/
[3] Whilst acknowledging its colonial and Eurocentric connotations, I use the term as one of the most commonly used to denote Arab-speaking majority countries in light of their largely shared histories and development trajectories, alongside Iran and Turkey.
[4] Hanieh, Adam. (2013). Lineages of Revolt. Haymarket.
[5] Hanieh, Lineages, Chapter 3
[6]https://www.merip.org/2003/03/egypt-struggles-to-control-anti-war-protests/
[7]https://www.meed.com/egypt-gdp-grows-5-9-in-last-quarter/
[8]https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/02/11/remarks-president-egypt
[9] Hanieh, Adam. (2015). “Shifting Priorities or Business as Usual? Continuity and Change in the
post-2011 IMF and World Bank Engagement with Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt”. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42(1), 119-134.
[10]https://eipr.org/sites/default/files/reports/pdf/egypt_in_the_grip_of_debt_4_0.pdf
[11]https://www.merip.org/2025/10/the-military-industrial-backbone-of-normalization/
[12]https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/10/egypts-purchase-chinese-fighter-jet-reminder-cold-war-tactics-are-back-middle-east
[13]https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202505/1333341.shtml
[14]https://sis.gov.eg/en/egypt/military-institution/joint-egyptian-chinese-air-exercise-eagles-of-civilization-2025/
[15]https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/10/egypts-purchase-chinese-fighter-jet-reminder-cold-war-tactics-are-back-middle-east
[16]https://sis.gov.eg/en/egypt/military-institution/joint-egyptian-chinese-air-exercise-eagles-of-civilization-2025/
[17]https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/10/egypts-purchase-chinese-fighter-jet-reminder-cold-war-tactics-are-back-middle-east
[18]https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-07-09/China-Egypt-partnership-reshaping-Egypt-s-economy-1ERIBwGikeY/p.html; https://idsc.gov.eg/upload/DocumentLibraryIssues/AttachmentA/9128/Chinese%20Investment%20in%20Egypt-%20Towards%20Prospects%20of%20Mutual%20Interests%20%20%20%20%20.pdf
[19]https://idsc.gov.eg/upload/DocumentLibraryIssues/AttachmentA/9128/Chinese%20Investment%20in%20Egypt-%20Towards%20Prospects%20of%20Mutual%20Interests%20%20%20%20%20.pdf
[20] Hanieh, Lineages.
[21]https://idsc.gov.eg/upload/DocumentLibraryIssues/AttachmentA/10166/Egypt%27s%20Relations%20with%20BRICS%20%20One%20year%20after%20joining%20the%20group%20-%20future%20perspectives%20%20.pdf
[22]https://idsc.gov.eg/upload/DocumentLibraryIssues/AttachmentA/9128/Chinese%20Investment%20in%20Egypt-%20Towards%20Prospects%20of%20Mutual%20Interests%20%20%20%20%20.pdf
[23] Joudeh, Safa. (2025). “Two wheels and two wings: the political economy of Chinese Industrial Park-Ports in the Middle East,” New Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2025.2550957