Chinese Ties with Sudan
The ongoing violence in Sudan, following the April breakout of clashes between Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces, poses key implications for Beijing. For one, the domestic political unrest and its potential knock-on effects on neighbouring countries and the Horn of Africa presents key obstacles to China's aspirations in Africa should the conflict ensue unabated over the coming months. The region includes large recipients of Chinese investment and Beijing likely wants to continue deepening diplomatic relations to boost its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a historic global investment project that builds infrastructure in the developing world, to extend China’s regional economic and political influence.
Diplomatic Edge
China’s manoeuvre into the African continent in recent decades has been well-documented. Particularly in terms of China’s multilateral approach, including the BRI, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Development Initiative, with 52 African countries having entered into partnership agreements with Beijing. Further still, Beijing organised the Horn of Africa Peace Conference and supported the African Union’s efforts to mediate Ethiopia’s civil war. Following Beijing's recent peace-brokering in the Middle East and intrigue around their potential to bring Putin to the table over the Ukraine War, there has been interest over how China would respond, and even if they would play a role in the conflict's resolution.
Many observers claim that the Sudanese are in fact looking to the East for mediation, even as Saudi Arabia and the US lead the current peacemaking efforts while Sudan's neighbours in the African Union, the UN, and several Arab and Middle Eastern nations call for dialogue. For instance, Manasseh Zindo, a South Sudanese peacemaker and a former delegate to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development-led peace process, explains “China has more influence on Sudan than the West and regional bodies” and is well-positioned to collaborate on a prospective resolution with countries of the Arab League, especially in the aftermath of having brokered a historic breakthrough in ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran earlier this year. Further, as highlighted by Ma Xiaolin, an international relations professor at Zhejiang International Studies University, this is owing to the fact that China has always maintained good relations with Sudan, including relations with their military, while both conflicting parties maintain trust in China’s position as a neutral party.
For these reasons the question of China’s potential role has garnered some traction, but Beijing as of now has stopped short after officially expressing their hope that the two sides will stop fighting soon. Though it is not impossible that Chinese diplomatic circles are adopting a “wait-and-see” approach to intervene at a point when the Jeddah talks have been deemed a failure, this would represent a massive qualitative change in Chinese foreign policy.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) leadership would struggle to justify the intervention to domestic detractors who remain devoted to the foreign policy doctrine of non-intervention and steering clear of internal civil strife in conflict-prone nations. Interventionism in internal affairs has long been opposed to Beijing’s stance on international affairs, which strongly champions state sovereignty. A seemingly expedient and imprudent involvement on Beijing’s part would therefore be a hard sell to the CCP cadres, more so given the fact that Beijing’s economic involvement in Sudan has been declining over the past decade or so. Painted in this light, there are marked differences between the essentially diplomatic Riyadh-Tehran rapprochement and what is a violent civil war, overall highlighting that Beijing’s increasing global activism should not be confused with unbounded interventionism. Meanwhile it is also worth noting that the US still has deep connections across the region that, though in decline, are strong and productive.
Despite playing into global narratives that China is replacing the US in regional environments around the globe, there is little evidence that China will throw itself into the Sudan conflict.
Economic Dimension
Nonetheless, China continues to possess significant economic interests in the country, which is liable to elicit its own set of problems should the socio-political situation worsen to the extent where the flow of Sudanese oil to Beijing gets impeded. Although South Sudan’s secession in 2011 moved the majority of the oil fields connected to the Chinese economy from Sudan, The China National Petroleum Corporation maintains working relations with the infrastructure and pipelines that process oil in Sudan and extractors in South Sudan. Further, Chinese companies, such as China National Petroleum Corporation, China Three Gorges Corporation, and China International Water & Electric Corporation, hold vast infrastructure investments in the country. Beijing also remains a key trading partner, especially after the US imposed sanctions on Sudanese officials. With over 130 Chinese businesses actively participating in Sudan's investment area, China is in fact Sudan's second-largest trading partner behind the United Arab Emirates. A weak security situation poses a direct threat to Chinese interests in the country.
Whether such factors may or may not override China’s current position on the conflict’s diplomatic sidelines is congruent with Beijing's appetite for writing off a portion of its economic considerations in the country’s extractive sector. A potential redressal mechanism in the shorter term for incurring economic losses may be to further downgrade China-Sudan trade ties, particularly in the realm of oil dependency, by replacing shortfalls via alternatives, such as Saudi Arabia. Further, tangible backtracking of China’s economic ties with Khartoum may also serve to placate perceived threats to Russian interests in the region. Analysts indicate that Moscow plans to build a military port on the Red Sea and use Sudan as a jumping-off point for operations in the surrounding nations. The recently increased presence of Russian paramilitary group Wagner in Sudan also speaks to China and Russia’s diametrically opposing interests in the country as sustained instability is conducive to Wagner’s successes in mining Sudanese gold. That said, China’s perceived ambivalence to the crisis and abandonment of a prominent regional ally is liable to reverberate poorly within the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, where Sudan is an important neighbour. Moreover, it may also deteriorate Beijing’s capacity in courting Sudanese warring factions, especially as this capability has been instrumental in securing concessions for Chinese nationals in the early days of the conflict and will be crucial to safeguarding Chinese presence in the country as the conflict ensues.
Ultimately, China is uniquely positioned to leverage its previous diplomatic and economic engagement with Sudan to bring about meaningful outcomes at the negotiating table. But whether or not these factors are enough to motivate China at this point in time is yet to be seen. However, this comes with certain caveats: China's neutral stance could pave the way for Beijing’s mediation role, but also engender competition with regional actors, such as the US, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Israel, and the UAE, thereby indicating considerable political costs. Further, Beijing’s already-detracting economic ties with Khartoum likely also compound the convoluted rationale behind an impending intervention. Despite these considerations, the prospect of Beijing’s involvement as peace-broker remains compelling, given the concurrent evolution in Chinese foreign policy of charting a world order the West cannot dominate and to differentiate Beijing from what it typecasts as “Western interventionism.”