Abstract
China’s increasingly significant economic and security interests in the greater Middle East, a key global crossroads, impact not only its energy security but also its regional posture, relations with global and regional players, and efforts to pacify nationalist and Islamist Uyghurs in its north-western province of Xinjiang. The threats to those interests are considerably enhanced by its 65-nation, $1 trillion Belt and Road initiative, an ambitious transcontinental, geopolitical ploy to embed Eurasia in a China-centric world buffered by transportation, energy, and trade networks. By comparison, the United States’ Marshall Plan for post-World War II Europe budgeted $800 billion in reconstruction funds to Europe, calculated as a percentage of current gross domestic product (GDP).
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Notes
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Dorsey, J.M. (2019). Introduction. In: China and the Middle East. Global Political Transitions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64355-7_1
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