China and Middle East Regime Change

Dean Cheng / February 25, 2011

Recent upheavals in the Middle East—including the overthrow of the governments in Tunisia and Egypt, riots in Bahrain, and near civil war in Libya—raise the question of what lessons the People’s Republic of China, and especially the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are likely to have learned.

The concern focuses not only on whether the Chinese foreign policy of non-interference is appropriate and sustainable (although the attacks on Chinese oil workers in Libya prompting their likely evacuation would suggest not) but also whether the Chinese are likely to interpret this upheaval as underscoring the need to become more democratic. (more…)