Party and State: China's Role in Syria

Sunday, August 11, 2013

China's Role in Syria

So much for China's much vaunted non-interference policy. Between 2007 and 2010, China supplied $3million worth of arms to Assad's regime, and in February of this year, the US imposed sanction on a Chinese company for violating nonproliferation legislation by conducting military transfers to Syria. But China is providing much more than weapons:

Furthermore, in an interview given to the Financial Times in June, Kadri Jamil, Syrian deputy prime minister for the economy, boasted that China has joined Iran and Russia in delivering $500 million a month in oil and credit to Syria. The majority of Syria’s oil is in the largely rebel-held north and northeast of the country, and the network of pipelines connecting the wells to the population centres are vulnerable to rebel attack. As a result, Syrian oil production has fallen by as much as 95 percent during the ongoing conflict, and the importance of Chinese aid should not be underestimated. Chinese financial and material support supplements Russian and Iranian aid and has allowed the Assad war machine to remain militarily effective.

Supporting Assad also allows the Chinese government to prevent it's already irate Sunni-Mulism majority population from radicalizing. The government has already blamed Syrian Opposition for the unrest in Xinjiang, claiming that they received training in rebel bases in Syria.

Accusations that the Chinese provided intelligence ahead of an air strike that tagargetted a western weapons convoy surfaced last month. The region is seen is of some interest to the Chinese because of it's vast, hitherto relatively unexploited natural resources, and the Chinese government has placed particular emphasis on getting those resources before any western coalition forces do like they did in Iraq.