Mohammed Turki Al-Sudairi is the Head of the Asian Studies Unit at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and is also currently a Researcher at the Hong Kong Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. Al-Sudairi earned a B.S. in International Politics from the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, a double master’s degree in International Relations and International History, respectively, from Peking University and The London School of Economics, and Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from the University of Hong Kong. His research largely focuses on Chinese domestic politics, normative transnational links in Sino-Middle Eastern relations, and the Arab left.
Transnational Shi’ism in Southern China and the Party-state’s “Hawza” Diplomacy
This article seeks to transcend the Sunni-centered narratives that often inform the discussions on Islamicate interactions with China. Following a cursory historical view of Shi’ism’s influences on Chinese expressions of Islam, the article presents a rough sketch of the contemporary transnational Shi’ite communities that have emerged over the past few decades in southern China, most notably those of Guangzhou (Guangdong) and Yiwu (Zhejiang). It then considers the simultaneous and closely-linked phenomenon, dubbed “hawza diplomacy,” of the Chinese party-state’s growing engagement with the custodial authorities of the Shi’ite shrines of Iraq.
Among Old Friends: A History of the Palestinian Community in China
Following the Bandung Conference in 1955, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) espoused―in an unusual contrast with other major powers of the “socialist” and “nonaligned” camps―a pro-Palestinian stance in its foreign policy toward the Middle East. This did not entail, however, any direct contact with the Palestinians, a development that did not appear until the mid-1960s emergence of a more autonomous and coherent Palestinian national movement embodied in the PLO. Contact prior to the establishment of formal channels of communication took place through a number of unofficial and semi-official conduits, ranging from the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), the Chinese embassies in Egypt and South Yemen after 1967, and the “underground” Communist networks (mainly Iraqi, Sudanese, and Yemeni) to such bodies as the Chinese Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity and the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. These contacts enabled the PRC to eventually extend formal diplomatic recognition of the PLO in 1964, making it the first non-Arab country to do so.
