Rethinking China, The Middle East and Asia in a Multiplex World

Reviewed by: Najam Abbas, London, UK 

Published by: Leiden: Brill, 2022, 259pp. ISBN: 9789004391604.

In diverse ways and forms, multiple global actors are contributing to the emergence of what Amitav Acharya calls a multiplex world, referring to the ‘decentring of power’, a world with the growing power of regions and a growing voice for the new actors. Amidst these altering dynamics of the global order, it is important to ascertain how relations between China, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia are evolving in such a multiplex realm. Such query will also be helpful in understanding (a) the ways in which China envisages and pursues its own vision of the global order, and (b) how pragmatically will the Chinese leadership be able to enter arrangements in different spheres with foreign partners.

Mojtaba Mahdavi asserts that China’s economic, political and military presence in the MENA may benefit that region in several ways, namely, providing a counterbalance for the US hegemony, by strengthening a ‘multiplex world order’, building bilateral relations along the track of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), offering alternatives to Western financial institutions, fostering innovations for knowledge economy and contributing to renewable and clean energy solutions for the region. The BRI, President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative, “boosts China’s economic, political, and geostrategic goal including its soft power’ (p.12). The BRI also seeks to promote connectivity via developing infrastructure which can facilitate increased exchange of both goods and services and, hence, strives to link major Eurasian economies through the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Route.

Through a political strategy to offend no one, China pragmatically pursues its doctrine for a peaceful rise and has hence introduced and followed it as a distinct path which suits the Chinese conditions. Beijing continues to promote and facilitate constant innovation to pursues an economic system which is an amalgamation of elements such as mercantilism and planned economy.