The Hidden Rivalry of Saudi Arabia and the UAE

The two countries look like allies—but are increasingly regional competitors.

By Arash Reisinezhad, a visiting fellow of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Mostafa Bushehri, the Charif Souki global energy fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Foreign Policy

Under a simpler and more stable global order, the United States would likely be concentrating its efforts on building an international coalition to counter China. But conflict and instability around the globe—first in Ukraine, and now the Gaza Strip, in particular—are dividing U.S. attention, diplomatic bandwidth, and military resources. Washington’s virtually unconditional support for Israel in its war against Hamas has generated global outrage—and cast China in a comparatively favorable light.

China has certainly taken advantage of this anti-American sentiment and is using it as an opening to position itself as a constructive player in the Middle East and broader global south, following its successful brokering of a breakthrough deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran last March. After taking over the rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council last November, China’s U.N. ambassador declared that addressing the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians was the body’s top priority. Later that month, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published its own peace plan, calling for an immediate cease-fire and affirming the need for a two-state solution.

Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated these points at an extraordinary virtual summit of BRICS—the economic bloc then comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—convened in November to address the situation in the Middle East. And earlier this month, China called for an international peace conference to determine a “binding roadmap” for determining the future of the Palestinian people.

China’s engagement with this war can be understood as part of a broader strategy to displace U.S. diplomatic hegemony by promoting multilateralism that is both resistant to Western dominance and susceptible to Chinese influence. Part of this strategy is rhetorical: Chinese officials tout their commitment to mutual respect and so-called win-win cooperation, contrasted against the United States and other Western powers whose dealings they characterize—implicitly or explicitly—as unilateral and bullying.

But China is also taking substantive action at an institutional level. This involves both joining and forming multilateral forums that exclude the United States, including the decades-old Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which focuses on security and counterterrorism in Central and South Asia, the recently expanded BRICS group, and Beijing’s newly established Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and Global Civilization Initiative.

This strategy also involves challenging the United States in shared multilateral forums. In the U.N., China has repeatedly criticized the United States for vetoing two Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. China also vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution that condemned Hamas for the Oct. 7 attack against Israel (which China itself has refrained from doing) and called for the immediate release of all hostages as well as “humanitarian pauses” to let in aid.

Thus far, China has stood only to gain from its own and other countries’ efforts to address the Gaza crisis through multilateral institutions. It can now credibly claim to have amplified non-Western calls for a cease-fire, humanitarian relief, and a two-state solution while taking the United States to task for obstructing them.

However, the recent charge of genocide brought forth against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the U.N.’s principal judicial body, complicates Beijing’s calculus. The case was lodged in late December by South Africa—a BRICS country and a key player in a region that China views as critical to its economic and geopolitical agenda.

Although the ICJ typically takes years to reach a verdict, it may issue “provisional measures” to prevent further potential crimes within a matter of days or weeks, as South Africa has requested.

The problem for China is that it, too, stands accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for its treatment of the Uyghurs and other minorities in the province of Xinjiang. If momentum builds behind the Israel case, it could also spur new multilateral action on Xinjiang, especially if South Africa is seen as having improved its international standing by initiating the proceedings.

Simply put, the more China elevates the forums responsible for resolving conflicts and protecting vulnerable populations, and the louder it trumpets its own leadership in the process, the greater the diplomatic cost will be to silence or ignore collective calls to hold China accountable for human rights violations in the future.

Importantly, no state has formally lodged genocide allegations against China with the ICJ. The United States and several of its allies have independently claimed that China has committed genocide against the Uyghurs, and the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights concluded in August 2022 that China had committed serious human rights violations that “may constitute… crimes against humanity.”

However, in October of that year, a majority of the U.N. Human Rights Council voted against or abstained from voting for a proposal to even discuss the findings of that report.

China vehemently denies these accusations and has persuaded representatives from many states—including numerous Muslim-majority ones in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—to endorse its policies in Xinjiang. In any event, although China is a party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, it does not accept compulsory jurisdiction of the court—nor do France, Russia, or the United States, for their part—and can also take comfort in the fact that the ICJ lacks an independent enforcement mechanism, relying instead on the U.N. Security Council (where China has veto power) to determine the practical effect of any verdict or provisional measures.

Still, China is skeptical of any procedure that could be cited as precedent by an external body to try to constrain its behavior on internal matters, or any decision that could serve as a model for galvanizing global opposition against Beijing. Just last October, China’s U.N. ambassador reiterated his country’s opposition to “politicizing human rights,” including on “Xinjiang- and Hong Kong-related issues.”

In this context, there are striking parallels between Israel’s case and that of Myanmar. In November 2019, amid international outrage at Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya minority, Gambia brought a charge of genocide to the ICJ. In January 2020, the court issued provisional measures ordering the Myanmar government to protect the Rohingya while the case proceeded. However, the following month, China (together with Vietnam, a rotating member of the Security Council at the time) blocked a vote on a joint statement by the Security Council.

This is far from an isolated incident. In 2021, for instance, China blocked a Security Council statement condemning the military coup in Myanmar that year. More recently, it unusually blocked a U.S. effort to post an online broadcast of a March 2023 Security Council discussion of the human rights situation in North Korea.

Of course, self-interested manipulation of U.N. procedures is hardly unique to China, and the United States has been widely condemned for what many member states view as its selective diplomatic sheltering for Israel.

But the ICJ case against Israel is particularly notable because it crystallizes the tension between the two roles that China aims to play on the international stage: the champion of multilateralism, standing up against the United States; and the defender of sovereignty, trumpeting the right of states to handle domestic problems—especially when it comes to terrorism and security—without foreign interference.

Chinese officials have so far remained quiet on Israel’s case. At a press briefing earlier this month, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning acknowledged the case and stated that the Chinese “oppose any action that violates the international law and urge parties to the conflict to earnestly implement relevant resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council and General Assembly, reach an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire and stop the collective punishment against the people of Gaza.”

China’s response to any provisional measures imposed by the ICJ on Israel on Friday will be an important indicator of how it will reconcile this tension. Precedent and the continued sensitivity of the Xinjiang issue suggest that Beijing may determine that its safest bet is to veto any binding resolution that the U.N. Security Council might issue to enforce an ICJ ruling.

On the other hand, Beijing’s unprecedented embrace of multilateralism means that stymying U.N. action will leave it more vulnerable than ever to charges of hypocrisy. Ironically, however, as long as China can count on a veto by the United States against any efforts to coerce Israeli restraint, it may be able to keep playing both roles.