GCC-ASEAN Summit in Riyadh, saudi Arabia
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, November 2: The opening of the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt is being seen as a major diplomatic breakthrough in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks against Israel. While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has pulled all arsenals under his diplomatic sleeves, taking snubs and scorns alike in his stride, to shield Israel from the Arabian fury for bombing Gaza indiscriminately with an extraordinary civilian casualty, China appears to be emerging as a big loser in the fast-paced Grate Game of diplomacy.
The October 20 meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the ASEAN went as per schedule with Saudi Arabia laying the ground for deeper ties between the two groupings. The emerging theme that dominated the deliberations was ‘Asia minus China’ as the Gulf nations and the South East Asian countries held parleys in deepening relations for a shared future amid the push by the US for de-coupling and Europe for de-risking with China. The two groupings underlying commonality of export-driven economies seemingly drove the urgency to look beyond China.
“The Gulf states and ASEAN are also reevaluating their strategic positioning on China,” noted Mohammed Soliman in an analysis on the GCC-ASEAN Summit in Al-Monitor, arguing that “the Asia Minus China Strategy, aimed at fostering broader integration between the Gulf and ASEAN to establish additional connectivity nodes outside China and reduce the political risk associated with Beijing, is gradually taking shape”.
The development comes out as significant for the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping had unveiled an agile diplomacy after taking the third term as the ruler of the Communist country and he was seen instrumental in brokering peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But the Israel-Hamas war seemingly brought the US at the centre stage of the Middle East with China looking a distant power.
With the US now holding parleys with the Arabian nations for the roadmap for the administration of Gaza after Israel achieves the objective of dismantling the Hamas, the Gulf nations are seen to be finding virtue in an alternative transportation independent of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China. Incidentally, India-US-Saudi Arabia had jointly announced India-Middle East-Europe transportation corridor on the basis of port-rail linkage. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing an APEC Summit ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit, had proposed the South East nations to give a connectivity to the West Asia and Europe.
There appears serious trouble for China in the making, for Philippines exited the BRI. Earlier, Italy had exited the $1 trillion BRI for which Xi committed another $100 billion in the leaders’ conclave last month. The Asia Times reported that Philippines decided to exit all BRI projects after finding that none of the “pledges of China amounting to $24 billion actually materialised”. The Asia Times reported that the China was essentially indulging in “pledge-trap” diplomacy with Philippines by taking advantage of the erstwhile Rodrigo Duterte administration which is now being reversed by his successor Ferdinand Marcos jr.
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