China’s Deafening Silence on Iraq -- Zachary Keck, The Diplomat
The Iraq crisis again shows that even as China demands major power status, it remains entirely unwilling to act like one.
As Shannon noted earlier this week, China has remained remarkably silent as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated over the last week and a half.
In the middle of last year, many Western media outlets became aware of the fact that China had won the Iraq War. That is, while the Chinese contributed nothing to toppling Saddam Hussein’s government, or stabilizing the country afterward, it reaped the benefits of his removal by investing copiously in post-Saddam Iraq’s oil industry. The China National Petroleum Corporation alone has invested $4 billion in Iraq’s oil industry, according to the New York Times. China is also the destination for nearly half of Iraq’s oil exports. Additionally, roughly 10,000 Chinese nationals reside in Iraq working on oil and infrastructure projects.
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My Comment: Unlike the U.S., the Chinese know the limits of what they can do in places like Iraq .... and prefer to operate on an economic level. But if Iraq splinters into different parts and the central authority in Baghdad collapses .... China's oil dependency on Iraq will be exposed .... and it will be a costly experience.
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