Among the Chinese political films that were recently available to view is the movie "Operation Red Sea", in which an elite of Chinese special forces intervene in the Gulf of Aden, to rescue hundreds of Chinese in a country in the Horn of Africa torn by civil war, and it appears from the faces of the fighters - who are targeted by the elite forces The Chinese - and from their tongues and dress patterns, that they are Muslims of Arab and African origin. Then the Chinese special forces came upon a town in the Arabian desert, to seize with extraordinary courage a quantity of uranium extract known in the media as "yellow cake" from the hands of terrorists, who could have used it in the production of the so-called "dirty bomb". At the end of the film, the victorious Chinese elite forces return home, but only after they expel American ships from the South China Sea.
However, what concerns us in the movie “The Red Sea Operation” is its political and strategic implications. This film, which was funded by the Chinese army with more than 70 million dollars - according to press reports - is not an innocent work of art, but rather an expression of the ambition of a rising nation, and expressive signs of a vision that nation for the coming arenas of confrontation, as it reminds of American Hollywood films of bright political color; Choosing the Gulf of Aden, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Arabian Desert as battlegrounds in this film is nothing but an expression of China's strategic vision for its upcoming conflict with Western powers over the heart of the Islamic world.
And when this work of art with an explicit political message is issued at a time when the conflict over the Islamic world is deepening between the masterminding American powers and the future Chinese forces, it is really worth contemplation, especially since the Islamic world extending from North Africa to Southeast Asia today covers most of the region called by a scientist British geographer James Vergrave (1870-1953) "The Crash Zone", because it is the area over which the major sea and land powers throughout history, from the Greek-Persian conflict, to the Mongols and the Crusaders, to the British Empire and Tsarist Russia, to America and the Union The Soviet Union, to China and America today.
Those who contemplate the transformations of the international system today hardly differ in that the most solid reality in it is the Chinese expansion and the American decline;
The Chinese economic miracle, which began 40 years ago, is today translated into political influence and strategic ambition. Their expression is no longer a metaphor and a diplomatic pun. Rather, it has become an explicit expression on the tongues of Chinese leaders, and plans written in the strategic guidance papers issued by Chinese decision-making centers.
Will China learn from the mistakes and sins committed by the Western powers in the Islamic world, or will it follow in the footsteps of those forces in not giving any strategic consideration to Muslims, and treating their countries as just a battlefield and not as a party to strategic equations, and colliding with the rock of history and geography? In the Islamic world, as the Western powers clashed with it before, and eventually lost
The American political thinker John Mearsheimer presents a theory about the rise and fall of international powers, which believes that the best way to rise and control the international system is for the country to turn into a regional power in its surroundings, and then prevent the emergence of another regional power in the vicinity of that country, and this is what the United States did in history contemporary; It has monopolized power in its regional environment, which is the American continent, then it has been keen to prevent any other country from becoming a regional power in its environment, whether it is Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or the People's China.
Based on this theory, Mearsheimer argues that a clash between China and America is inevitable, as America will seek to "contain" China with its close neighbors (including Russia), in a way that it contained the Soviet Union with its neighbors - including China - and China will respond violently to that, It considers it an "encirclement" and an aggression against its natural right to influence and expand as an international power. China is not a "fait accompli", as Mearsheimer says, but rather a country seeking to change the global reality.
The Sino-American conflict - as Mearsheimer sees it - is the major fact that will characterize the international system with its own character during the twenty-first century. As for the European powers that were full of hearing and sight in the twentieth century, today they are "a museum and a story from the past," as he puts it. It seems that the recent Aukus agreement between the United States, Britain and Australia justifies the Mearsheimer theory, as it resembles the beginning of the American naval encirclement of China with the Anglo-Saxon Pact, which may include in the future Japan, India and other Asian countries that have historical enmity or competition with China.
However, the rise of China and its ambitions of expansion and strategic consolidation at the world level depends - to a large extent - on its dealings with the Islamic world, from which it is bordered by several countries at its western flank in Central and South Asia: namely, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These countries are China's land gateway to the Middle East and Central Asia, its outlet if the Western blockade in the South China Sea intensifies, and its gateway to extending its huge "New Silk Road" project through which it seeks economic domination over the world. China, which is the world's largest energy importer, also depends on oil and gas from Islamic countries in the Middle East, as it imports about half of its imports from these countries. On the South China Sea, which is the arena of the hot Sino-American confrontation today, Muslim countries of weight, including Indonesia and Malaysia, are seen.
Will China learn from the mistakes and sins committed by the Western powers in the Islamic world, or will it follow in the footsteps of those forces in not giving any strategic consideration to Muslims, and treating their countries as just a battlefield and not as a party to strategic equations, and colliding with the rock of history and geography? In the Islamic world, as Western powers clashed with it before, and eventually lost, as we saw at the end of the American adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq after two decades of strategic confusion?!
The Chinese position is less hypocritical than the Western position, which calls for democracy and supports dictatorship, and raises the slogan of human rights in a crude selective manner, far from any moral harmony in positions.
It is not clear to strategic analysts what are China's intentions and intentions towards dealing with the Islamic world, whether the Asian part of it bordering China by land and sea, or the Arab and African part, which includes energy and raw materials, and the vital straits of international trade. But it can be said that it is good for China to accept the Islamic world as it is, and not to seek to penetrate it politically and culturally, as the Western powers and Russia did for two centuries. China does not have a colonial history in this region, unlike Russia and Western countries. Rather, it was itself a victim of brutal Japanese and Western colonialism in modern times, and was traditionally sympathetic to the liberation of peoples from colonialism, including its political support for the glorious Algerian revolution.
The Chinese foreign policy in the Islamic world was characterized - until recently - a lot of sobriety and reservation. Unlike Western countries with colonial inheritances and strategic penetration of the region, China does not bother regimes by raising slogans of democracy and human rights, nor does it bother peoples by seeking to influence their identity or internal strategic decision in their countries. China has been able to win over all parties in the region, through what it does not do, more than it has gained them through what it does; The Chinese position is less hypocritical than the Western position, which calls for democracy and supports dictatorship, and raises the slogan of human rights in a selective and crude manner, far from any moral harmony in positions, as explained by the researcher at the American “Brookings” Foundation, Shadi Hamid, in a recent article about The American position on the coup of Kais Saied in Tunisia, under the title: "Tunisia and the Return of American Hypocrisy."
With this sober policy, China was able to win over the regimes in the Islamic world without losing the people. As for America, it lost the peoples of the Islamic world a long time ago, and today it is on the verge of losing the political regimes in the long run. It began abandoning its traditional allies in our region, before abandoning its Western allies in Europe. Today, we are living through America's orientation to the East Asian region, and the beginning of its gradual liberation from any strategic commitment towards its traditional allies in the Islamic world - especially in the Middle East - and some of them left it in a state of panic and complete strategic exposure.
China has benefited - with its prudence - from the regional security system established by the Americans in the Middle East - in the Gulf in particular - without paying the price for it. While the American forces had surrounded the Gulf with their fleets for decades in order to secure energy export lines and suffocated the Middle East with its military bases, China was importing more energy from the region than the Americans, and used the region’s straits (Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab, Suez Canal) in its international trade more than any other another country. Today, we find China reaping the fruits in Afghanistan after the Russians and the Americans turned the country of the Afghans into a wasteland for four decades, and none of them reaped the political or economic fruits of their brutal invasion of Afghanistan.
Perhaps this Chinese political prudence is due to cultural and strategic reasons. One of the cultural reasons is China's historical tendency to be self-sufficient and regressive, which is symbolized by the Great Wall of China, which is considered one of the greatest defense and construction facilities and one of the longest in human history.
It seems that Chinese culture has a certain strategic patience with deep historical roots that go back to the days of the Chinese strategic theorist Sun Tzu, the author of the book "The Art of War", which is still taught today in military colleges around the world, despite the passage of more than 25 centuries since its authorship.
The persecution of Uyghur Muslims has left a deep wound in the hearts of Muslims all over the world, and this wound could poison the future strategic relations between China and the Islamic world.
And what deepens this wound is that China targeted the Uyghurs in matters of religion and honor, which are particularly sensitive in Islamic culture
In contrast to Western countries with a superior tendency towards Muslims, China has always been more modest and less bragging in its dealings with other peoples, including Islamic peoples. In addition, China is more open to Muslims in the field of transferring military technology, as evidenced by its solid relations with Pakistan in this regard. This is an important history that can be built upon. While we find that America and other Western countries are the most miserly people with military technology if they deal with Muslim countries, and the keenest to keep Islamic countries militarily backward, even if those countries have been allies with them for decades. And the last example of that today is the crude American dealings with Turkey in the deal of the American “F-35” planes, and the Russian “S-400” missiles.
And two Zhoushan issues remain on any deep strategic rapprochement between China and the Islamic world, and they are the position of the Chinese government on the revolutions of the Arab peoples, and its persecution of Uyghur Muslims. China sided with Russia against the Arab revolutions, and used its veto in the UN Security Council more than once, to prevent any threat to Bashar al-Assad's regime in Damascus (although America and Europe were never serious about supporting the Syrian revolution or toppling Assad anyway). But it is not clear whether this Chinese position on the Arab revolutions is just a compliment to Russia due to the Sino-Russian rapprochement, or whether it stems from a Chinese strategic perspective for the region and its political destinies.
The issue of Muslim Uyghurs remains the most serious issue in Chinese-Islamic relations, although the ruling political regimes in the Islamic world have not dared - so far - to pressure China to do justice to its Muslims. The wound could poison the future strategic relations between China and the Islamic world. This wound is deepened by the fact that China targeted the Uyghurs in matters of religion and honor, which are particularly sensitive in Islamic culture.
In his novel "Turkistan Nights" published in the early seventies of the twentieth century, the Egyptian doctor, Dr. Naguib al-Kilani (1931-1995) depicts the plight of Uyghur Muslims in the second third of the twentieth century with the rise of communist rule in China. It deeply expresses their wounded sense of dignity when communists desecrate their Islamic sanctities, or force them to marry off their daughters to non-Muslims. In this context, Al-Kilani quotes the protagonist (Mustafa) as saying: “One day, the Chinese leader issued a circular that shook the country from one end to the other. Occupation is a temporary matter that may end one day, and the battle with the enemy is hit and miss, but for the enemy to trample people’s feelings, despise their laws, and ridicule their religion, this is a matter beyond our ability.”
Researcher Muhammad Huda Prayuga presented a nice university thesis on "Social Values in the Novel of Turkestan Nights", at the Faculty of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the Indonesian University of Sharif Hidayatullah in Jakarta, in which he elaborated the hadith on this subject in detail. But it seems that the Chinese political elite has not succeeded in understanding Islamic culture until now, otherwise it would not be repeating today what the Egyptian writer portrayed in his novel about the era of the thirties and forties in East Turkistan (the Uyghur region). It is as if China is here following in the footsteps of the Americans in the misdeeds they committed against religion and honor in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a result of arrogance and ignorance.
It is understandable that China is keen on its territorial integrity, like all countries in the world, but the matter does not require the policies of genocide and cultural persecution that it is pursuing towards Uyghur Muslims today. Muslim politicians and scholars can mediate between the Chinese government and its Uyghur citizens, to find a political formula that preserves the Uyghur Muslims their faith and Islamic identity, and respects the unity of the Chinese state. In fact, the region of East Turkestan is - by the logic of geopolitics - the natural gateway for China to the Islamic world. At the start of the new Chinese Silk Road. This is better for everyone than putting these Muslims in a state of misery and persecution, and turning their plight into a thorn in Islamic-Chinese relations.
More than a quarter of a century ago, the American political philosopher Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) predicted the strengthening of Chinese-Islamic relations “towards the establishment of a huge global alliance to confront the West in a war of great civilizations.” In Huntington’s talk - as usual - something of exaggeration and blatant prejudice against Muslims and against The Chinese, but he was the first to realize the centrality of religion in international relations, and to perceive the upcoming transformations in the international system, which are transformations that open new doors for China and the Islamic world of strategic cooperation.
If America and its European allies had taken a less hypocritical behavior in their relationship with Muslim peoples, and had taken a less intrusive approach in the internal political and cultural affairs of Muslim societies, the Islamic identity and Islamic democracy would have been a fortified shield against the Chinese advance coming from the East.
But the resentment of colonial inheritances - which are outdated and drunk - leads to political and strategic blindness.