China has raised serious concerns about the ongoing conflict in Syria, focusing on the potential dangers posed by terrorist groups and their activities. Syria’s new government received a significant warning about the dangers of supporting terrorism,
Bashar al-Assad was an ally of both Iran and Russia, Beijing's key partners. Here is how his fall is being seen in China.
There is too much power in the hands of the US and regional actors like Turkey for China to play a key role After Russia and Iran's regional power projection, China's diplomacy is the most visible victim of the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad at the hands of a coalition of rebel forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
China’s leadership is not happy about the fall of Assad. But compared to Russia and Iran, Beijing had far less at stake.
"The future of Syria should be decided by the Syrian people," Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told Newsweek.
However, with the downfall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and the catastrophic loss of Hamas and Hezbollah during its war against Israel, Tehran faces mounting geopolitical threats with splintered regional proxies.
A top Chinese envoy has warned Damascus's new government not to support terrorism as a Syria-based Islamic militant group sent messages to Muslims in China's Xinjiang region, urging them to wage attacks.
The military junta ruling Myanmar, an ally of Russia which also has close ties to China, has suffered a series of major military losses to insurgents in the western Rakhine and Chin states in recent days that have highlighted its weakening hold in the Southeast Asian country.
Facing the loss of its sole Arab ally and much of its sphere of influence, Tehran might seek to capitalize on the opening initiated by China to mend ties with the Arab states.
The TIP has been based in Syria for more than a decade, with its members fleeing to the Middle East to escape China’s severe oppression of the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim minority group. Its fighters joined Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that led the rebel offensive, in a thrust out of the north-west of Syria.
With a new administration in Damascus, China is revaluating its relationship with Syria and increasingly focused on rise of Islamists' threats.
Syria had not been not a central pillar of China's Middle East strategy, Jesse Marks, a non-resident fellow with the Stimson Centre's China programme and a former US defence adviser, said ...