China seeks greater regional influence via Gulf university ties

China is expanding its presence in universities across the Gulf states, helping it to increase its influence in the region and attract students at the expense of institutions in the US and elsewhere.

While Beijing’s efforts to use its financial might to win friends in African universities have been widely reported, its movements in the Middle East are less well known.

David Roberts, senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said China had engaged a lot with Gulf universities – including on exchange trips, academic visits and supporting Mandarin programmes.

Dr Roberts said he suspected this was a growing trend, and was perhaps evidence of China trying to exert its influence in the Gulf – though that was not necessarily a “nefarious” thing.

“The ultimate goals are a bit more intra-regional communication – soft power is getting people to understand your way of thinking,” he said.

John Calabrese, assistant professor of global and immersive studies at American University, said China’s cooperation in higher education with the Gulf states should be understood against the backdrop of internationalisation of the sector across the Middle East and North Africa.

The Gulf had formerly been dominated by prestigious Western universities, with a dozen US universities setting up branch campuses in recent years, said Dr Calabrese. He added that China’s launching of a strategic national plan across the Gulf, the region’s rapidly expanding youth population and Xi Jinping coming to power had all raised China’s profile and presence in the region over the past decade.

At the first summit between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) last December, President Xi pledged to expand educational cooperation, focused mainly on Chinese language learning in universities.

Dr Calabrese said not much progress had been made since then but there was a clear rationale behind it – including to build goodwill.

“For another, over time, language learning can help to narrow the cultural gap and in the longer term help underpin China’s economic and political engagement with the region,” he said.

He added that China had also become an increasingly popular destination for Arab students, while at the same time their number at US institutions had plunged “disturbingly” in recent years.

“One can regard these higher education activities as efforts by China to deploy soft power,” Dr Calabrese said.

“Besides the potential gains from knowledge transfer and knowledge building, I suspect that China seeks to burnish its image, protect its assets and stakes in the region, improve its favourability rating within Gulf societies and possibly win support from Gulf governments for its policies and positions.”

Just last month, the China-Arab Consortium of Universities Exchange Mechanism was launched in Jordan, with the aim of promoting scientific and other academic exchanges and multiple forms of collaboration.

And earlier this year, Beijing announced a space technology centre to be based at UAE University, developed with the assistance of Hong Kong University’s Laboratory for Space Research and Origin Space, a private Chinese company.

Jacqueline Armijo, associate professor of the humanities at the American University of Afghanistan and a specialist on China-Gulf relations, said this initiative could play a vital role in the development of new space technologies, as well as provide a training ground for region-based scientists.

Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia recently initiated major projects to incorporate Chinese language classes into the curricula of both primary and secondary public schools.

Dr Armijo said these students could one day be able to attend universities in China, while China continued to offer thousands of scholarships to students from strategic countries learning how to teach Chinese as a foreign language.

Together, she said, this could “prove to be a fundamental shift in the production of scientific knowledge in the future”.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com