China’s diplomatic calendar this year reflects its growing international weight. A succession of prominent leaders has travelled to Beijing, including those from the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, South Korea, Pakistan and Jordan.
The recent visit by Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to China, as well as visits by high-level officials from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia earlier this year, confirm Beijing’s expanding role in the Gulf.
The region, which has traditionally aligned with the US, is seeing growing competition between the two powers. But this rivalry does not mean that China is seeking to replace the US. It is approaching the region through trade and technology – something that fits into the Gulf’s own economic and development interests.
The US model China does not want
The US remains the Gulf’s most important external military partner. Its defence partnerships, intelligence ties, weapons systems, naval capabilities, and military presence remain central to regional security.
For years, Washington has measured Chinese influence against its own military power. By those standards, China remains far from being able to replace the US. But that is the wrong measure of strategic success.
China has shown little interest in competing with the US on military reach in the Gulf. That is because it has benefitted directly from the security Washington has provided in the region.
For decades, the US Navy helped secure maritime routes through which Gulf energy reached Asian markets. US military power in the Gulf region contributed to the stability that allowed Chinese companies to trade, invest, build infrastructure, and purchase energy.
From the Chinese perspective, this arrangement cost little and delivered significant returns. Replacing the US security system would mean assuming the political, financial and military costs of becoming the Gulf’s security guarantor, which would not be in its interest.
Instead, China has concentrated on sectors where it can build economic leverage, seeking to become as important to Gulf states’ economies as Washington is in the region’s security architecture.
Today, Chinese state-owned firms hold stakes in key Gulf infrastructure, such as ports. For example, COSCO Shipping Ports holds a controlling stake in the joint venture operating the CSP Abu Dhabi Terminal at Khalifa Port in the UAE.
Chinese companies are also increasingly connected to sectors that will shape the region’s future, including renewable energy, telecommunications, manufacturing, logistics, electric vehicles, and digital infrastructure.
Once these systems become interconnected through financing, contracts, and trade, disengagement carries substantial economic costs. An aircraft carrier can leave, and a troop deployment can be reduced, but leverage and stakes in ports, factories, telecommunications networks, and supply chains are harder to undo.
China’s approach does not require Gulf governments to become politically pro-Beijing. It only needs an openly anti-China position to become economically too costly.
The Gulf interest
For the Gulf states, there is no contradiction in seeking strong ties with both powers. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar each want US security cooperation and advanced Western technology while also seeking Chinese markets, manufacturing capacity, investment, and access to Asian economic networks.
Their objective is to avoid excessive dependence on either power. Their strategy is pursuing diversification, hedging, and strategic autonomy in an increasingly multipolar international system.
The US-Israel war on Iran, which has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and damaged US bases across the Gulf, including Al Udeid in Qatar, demonstrated why this strategy is so crucial. Excessive dependence on a single actor or area creates vulnerability, whether that dependence involves a single security provider, export market, shipping route, technology ecosystem, or source of capital.
For the Gulf states, diversification is therefore a necessity, a form of risk management. They are positioning themselves for an international system in which US power remains important but is no longer the only source of economic, political, and technological influence.
Diversification is being pursued not just in the security sphere. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and other regional states are attempting to build economies beyond hydrocarbons. Artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, and logistics are becoming central to their national strategies.
Artificial intelligence (AI) in particular shows what is at stake. Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN and the UAE’s G42 reflect national ambitions to build AI industries. AI in turn depends on advanced chips, data centres, energy, computing infrastructure, capital, and skilled workers.
The Gulf states are seeking partners who can contribute to the capital, technology, infrastructure, and industrial partnerships required to build these more diversified economies.
Presence is not the same as power
Washington should therefore reconsider how it measures strategic power.
The decisive question may no longer be how many bases a country possesses in a region, but how difficult that country is to remove from the regional system.
The US remains deeply embedded in the Gulf through defence relationships, intelligence cooperation, financial institutions, universities, technology companies, and diplomatic partnerships.
China is creating a different form of integration, as trade, infrastructure, technology, and investment generate long-term interests that markets can translate into leverage.
Washington need not force Gulf governments to choose between the US and China in every sector. Legitimate security concerns remain over advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, sensitive data, and dual-use technologies. Those sectors require clear safeguards.
The US’s better option is to compete. It should offer superior technology, credible financing, and deeper industrial partnerships, playing a meaningful role in the Gulf’s economic transformation.
Security guarantees remain essential, but they no longer guarantee primacy across every sector.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
