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There are hardly a few things common between China and the Holy See. But an atheist China and a theocratic Vatican are travelling in the same boat when it comes to the Middle East to ensure the volatile region peace, prosperity and stability.
Currently, the US has ramped up a tariff war against China, the second largest economy in the world, and has instructed all its allies, including NATO nations and Asian sidekicks, to boycott China and its market-leading technologies. The US National Security Strategy statement has clubbed China, alongside Russia, as a ‘revisionist power.’
However, their escalating tensions have not yet constituted a new cold war because they were all-weather allies once.
Back in the 1990s, the US orchestrated China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). At the peak of the financial meltdown in 2008, the US guaranteed China’s dollar assets. When George Bush Jr. hit the stand with the War on Terror, China was roped in as a major partner.
Yes, the emphasis was on cooperation and the US hoped the integration of China into the international order would liberalize the communist nation.
But that did not happen and China, on the other hand, found more allies and friends who were willing to side with its state-driven economic model.
Like China, the Holy See is also distancing from the new world order, planned by capitalism.
After Europe shed its Christian roots to form the secular trade block of the European Union, the Vatican has been left high and dry. Its earlier role of supplying trained hands to toil for capitalism and making people healthy to work through its vast network of hospitals and colleges lost its numero uno status after private healthcare facilities, universities, colleges and schools gave them a tough competition.
The gulf further widened when secular western governments began to champion anti-Catholic themes like abortion and the rights of LGBTQ people under the guise of ‘inclusion.’
However, after assuming the papacy in 2013, Pope Francis started to chide capitalism. His apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) with a pointed firmness flayed modern capitalism, implemented as neoliberalism globally.
“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.”
The Argentinian pope was sure that the distributive model of laissez-faire capitalism would not work due to the greed of owners of means of production.
“No to the new idolatry of money,” he urged in the apostolic exhortation.
Later, the pope picked up holes in modern capitalism and declared his papacy pro-poor and anti-colonial. His firm political stance against the pro-free market economic policies was pointed at the European Union and the United States.
By 2018, the pope entered in the good books of China by piecing together a two-year secret deal with the communist Asian nation, which gave the 86-year-old supreme pontiff more teeth in the appointment of bishops and got him more say in the affairs of nearly 12 million Catholics in China.
Though the US protested when the secret pact came up for its first extension in 2020, the Holy See did not pay heed and renewed the pact for yet another two years.
In its efforts to control the global oil market, the US had managed to install pro-US regimes in the Middle East, a major oil-producing region, since the 1970s. Though Washington’s efforts to divide and rule increased bottomline of western oil majors, people in the Middle East were not happy with the unholy ties of petroleum and the dollar.
Under President Barack Obama, the US diverted its attention from the Middle East to put more thrust on the new Pivot Asia policy, which was aimed at containing China.
The vacuum created by the US exit from the Middle East has been assiduously used by both China and the Vatican to become increasingly engaged and reap rich dividends.
Currently, China is the major partner for the Gulf nations in several fields like infrastructure investment, trade in goods and services, digital technology, and defense.
The heart of their collaboration is energy. Saudi Arabia provides nearly 17 percent of China’s oil imports, Qatar is a major natural gas exporter, and a huge portion of oil exports from Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, and the UAE reach Chinese shores at present.
If the Sunni-controlled Saudi Arabia, a long-standing ally of the US, and Shia-majority Iran were implacable adversaries during the US presence in the Middle East, China, which is locked in an all-round confrontation with the Biden administration, brought both the oil-rich nations on a common platform who agreed to renew their diplomatic missions this month.
China made it possible what the US strenuously tried to stave off.
The Holy See is also making its presence felt in the Middle East in a big way. By visiting the United Arab Emirates in 2019, Pope Francis became the first bishop of Rome to set his foot on Arabian soil. Then milestone achievements one after another followed. The Document on Human Fraternity took birth, a visit to Iraq and meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiites, followed during the papal visit to Iraq in 2021 at the height of the pandemic. The pope also paid a visit to Bahrain in 2022 to give a shot in the arm to the Church’s inter-faith dialogue.
This year, the UAE inaugurated a multi-religious complex -- hosting a church, mosque and synagogue in the same camps – another achievement of his 2019 visit to the sheikdom. The Vatican also established diplomatic ties with the Sultanate of Oman this year.
The heart of their co-operation is to keep Jihadist Islam, which has declared a self-declared war on Judaeo-Christian western values, at bay.
Both the Holy See and China are showing the olive branch in the Middle East while the US is busy elsewhere with something else, which gives less room for peace, prosperity and stability.
