In the wake of Algerian independence war, the colonial regime evacuated nearly all French medical personnel, leaving the war-torn Algeria in a dire public hygiene crisis, and forcing Algerian nationalist authority to solicit international medical aid. Considering Algeria as an anti-imperialist ally, the Chinese government immediately responded to the request and dispatched 24 medical experts to Algeria in the spring of 1963, which turned out to be an unprecedented success for China’s foreign aid policy in terms of its profoundly positive policy effects. Since then, China gradually devised an international medical aid modality which has been incessantly dispatching medical teams initially to Algeria, then to almost all African countries. Since the 1980s, China’s foreign medical assistance has been institutionalized as a comprehensive diplomatic project comprising a stabilized scale of medical personnel, various medical training programs, considerable amounts of medical material donation, and massive medical infrastructure constructions. In terms of the patients treated, manpower and material cost invested, China’s foreign medical aid is estimably the largest and the most consistent international medical aid offered by a single country in the modern history. Taking Algeria as an example, and drawing together theoretical debates on public diplomacy, gift economies, south-south cooperation, and political Neo-Confucianism, this article is to contextualize China’s medical presence in Africa, conceptualize China’s international medical aid modality, and illustrate its far-reaching politico-economic implications. Mainly based on historical data with limited interviews, this research reveals that Chinese doctors have long been intentionally or unintentionally working as informal diplomats who in effect improved China’s international image and facilitated its diplomatic agenda. Contrary to the general perception of China’s overall international development regime which seems to operate in a socially blind, top-down, and rigidly formal manner, this article contends that, in addition to upholding the morality of international humanism, the Chinese government has been clearly aware of the policy effects of this particular foreign aid modality and has deliberately constructed its medical presence in Africa as a down-to-earth, bottom-up, and heart-winning foreign investment. This article intends to provide a preliminary case study for more comprehensive investigations into the largely neglected Sino-Maghrebi relations within China’s ever-increasing engagements with Africa and the Middle East.

Turkey plays a pivotal role in world politics, thanks to its geopolitical position at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. While Turkey's tumultuous relations with the US and EU have been creating an unpredictable context, the country has been deepening its ties with China. Chinese-Turkish relations have been growing exponentially since 2017 when Turkey moved to an executive presidential system from a parliamentary democracy and faced a severe economic crisis. As China expands its investment globally, it has become Turkey's primary import and third-largest trading partner. What complicates Turkey-China relations, however, is the fact that Turkey host one of the largest diaspora of Uighurs, an ethnic Turkish Muslim community from Xinjiang, China's most significant natural gas-producing region. Turkey's ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has assumed a preeminent role in providing humanitarian aid to many Muslim communities outside Turkey. Positioned themselves as the protectors of Muslim communities around the world, the AKP and President Erdogan have been vocal critics of the Communist Party's approach to Uighurs. However, the AKP is also under pressure to further its relations with China in order to alleviate the outcomes of Turkey's ongoing economic crisis and decreasing Western investments. Several bilateral agreements frame and facilitate the growing economic ties and cooperation in other areas such as security and education. As a result, the recent drastic expansions in Turkey's relations with China offer a significant case to probe into whether, and in what ways expanding economic relations between authoritarian regimes with contradictory domestic interests can reinforce authoritarianism or help facilitate internal democratic processes. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of the recent expanding relations between China and Turkey. It examines, given that China's policies vis a vis its ethnic Muslim populations are discriminatory and repressive, how does Turkey's ruling AKP address the issue of Uyghur Turks given its claim to defend the rights of Muslims globally and expand its relations with China at the same time? Do the ties with China reinforce authoritarianism in Turkey or do they undermine the regime by displaying its weaknesses? The arguments of this paper draw from review of bilateral agreements and projects, and interviews with specialists working in China owned sectors in Turkey, content analysis of newspapers such as Global Times and Sabah that capture views of both sides, and a set of interviews with people who are involved in Chinese enterprises in Turkey.

The race among Gulf Arab states to become tech-driven, knowledge economies involves large bets on advanced technological platforms and digital applications. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and financial technology are viewed as promising pathways toward alleviating cost and budget pressures and supporting economic diversification. China represents a natural partner to help advance the Gulf’s technological ambitions. Facing slower growth at home, Chinese technology firms and major investment companies are seeking to expand beyond their domestic markets. Moreover, the Gulf region serves an integral commercial node linking Asia with African and European markets. This paper seeks to explain how Chinese capital and firms impact the development, adoption, and implementation of advanced technologies in Gulf Arab states. China’s role in major development projects, trade of goods and commodities, and tourism across the Gulf region has been the subject of numerous academic studies. Far fewer academic works examine the levers of Chinese influence over the Gulf’s softer commercial structures: developing telecommunications infrastructure, investing in Gulf-based technology startups, and establishing regional headquarters of Chinese technology firms. Using the United Arab Emirates as a case study, this paper argues that China’s growing involvement in the Gulf’s technology sphere goes beyond a “transactional” form of commercial engagement and instead reflects a longer-term strategy of aligning China’s expansionist policies with the Gulf’s economic visions and institutional structures. The political economy focus of this work entails an approach that is inherently interdisciplinary. The work relies heavily on a political science lens that emphasizes the interplay between institutional frameworks and firm behavior in order to explain development outcomes. Consequently, macro- and meso-levels of analysis illustrate the contours of Chinese involvement in the UAE’s technology sphere. To demonstrate this paper’s thesis, it draws heavily on qualitative and quantitative data collected during research visits to the United Arab Emirates as well as oral interviews with Emirati officials and business and technology editors from international media outlets. This paper adds a new scholarly dimension to two related fields: i) the international political economy of Gulf Arab states and ii) state-business relations in the Middle East. Insights and feedback related to this paper will inform the author’s ongoing book chapter project for the Routledge Handbook on China - Middle East Relations (early 2021). Future researchers interested in China-Gulf relations can also use this paper presentation and the forthcoming publication as a foundation to examine China’s technology-focused commercial activities in other Gulf Arab states.

The proposed talk examines comparatively the role of Islam, as an aspect of proto-nationalist identities, in the formulation of Arab and Kyrgyz national identities. In both cases, Islam initially served to legitimize local traditions and folk religious practices—it corresponded to what anthropologist Clifford Gertz has referred to as “Low Islam.” In both cases also, reformist movements have sought to formalize Islamic practice in line with the Qur’an and Hadith, to impose on the nation what Gertz refers to as “High Islam”—more specifically, to promote the idea that a more formalized Islam should play a greater role politically and socially, and by extension, as an aspect of respective national identities. Said developments would transpire during different time periods: In the Arab case, during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, in the Kyrgyz case, immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. I maintain that, whereas “High Islam” would take precedence in terms of how Islam informed Arab national identity, “Low Islam” would prevail in the Kyrgyz case. Largely this is because of two key potentialities that exist in the former, but not in the latter. The first is linguistic: in the Arab case, the national language is also the language of the Qur’an, such that emphasis of the former finds an easy correspondence with emphasis of a more formalized, Qur’anic Islam as an aspect of national identity. The second is ideological, and corresponds to the antecedents of the salafi version of Arabism, formulated during the early part of the twentieth century, wherein the Arabs were defined as the Muslim community par excellence, and as having a special role to play in the reform of Islam worldwide. This might be contrasted with the Kyrgyz case. Obviously the linguistic link to the Qur’an does not exist, but more importantly, there is no meaningful ideological framework for linking the Kyrgyz people to the larger Muslim world on the basis of a shared faith. Indeed, political actors have sought to ensure that Islam maintain its folkloric character, even while overtly dissociating “Kyrgyz Islam” from the “Islam” of other Central Asian countries, and seeking to discredit Islamic reformist movements by characterizing them as Wahhabism (foreign) or associating them with minority populations (primarily Uzbeks and Uighurs). That their attempts have resonated with Kyrgyzstan’s majority Muslim population, I would argue, reflects these two factors.