Jordan-China Relations: Taking Stock Of Bilateral Relations at 45 Years

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is celebrating 45 years of diplomatic relations with China, but the bilateral relationship has faced several impediments over the past decade. The two, which enjoy historic and deep trade relations, have struggled to find equal footing on a range of issues facing the region from resource scarcity to conflict mediation. Regional crises have forced both into sensitive geopolitical contestations, while domestic misalignments have prompted under-the-surface tensions over each other’s national interests.

Framing Jordanian Foreign Policy

Jordan is heavily reliant on foreign development and humanitarian assistance to offset its lack of natural resources and stabilize its fragile economy and lagging industrialization. The Jordanian government has long relied on large-scale aid and development packages from wealthier neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as European and U.S. partners to offset its domestic challenges, which have grown to include economic fragility, the spillover of conflict from Iraq and Syria, the threat of domestic social instability, and hosting millions of Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian refugees without sufficient resources. For its many domestic challenges, Jordan has maintained a predictable level of security which has long attracted interest from governments who see Jordanian stability as a net benefit to the region and an investment worthy of preservation.

Jordan’s foreign policy is shaped by several key features. First, the Jordanian monarchy plays a critical role in fostering Jordan’s relationship with great powers, including China, Russia, and the United States. Over the past decades, King Abdullah II has bolstered the nation’s position through high-level engagements with a range of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to China’s Xi Jinping. Through these engagements, he has projected Jordan’s image as a cornerstone of regional stability, a counterterrorism partner, and an example of moderate Islam. And, in times of domestic crisis, the King has utilized these relations to solicit political, economic, and financial support.

Second, Jordan’s national stability is considerably linked to large inflows of foreign aid, particularly U.S. foreign assistance, including economic assistance, direct budget support, and military assistance.¹ To date, the U.S. is Jordan’s largest provider of foreign assistance. Under a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the U.S. provided Jordan with a baseline of $6.375 billion from FY2018 to FY2022, with a new MoU currently under negotiations for FY2023.² A significant portion of Jordan’s diplomatic bandwidth is spent ensuring the continuity and growth of foreign aid inflows.

Third, Jordan’s presiding national security priority remains its domestic security, and international concerns over Jordan’s long-term stability have aided the Kingdom’s calls for more aid. And, combined with Jordan’s economic dependency on the United States, a unique synergism has evolved whereby breaking the status quo and de-facto agreement (aid for stability) creates a perceived risk of undermining Jordan’s national security. The result for Jordan is an understanding that its stability is one of its biggest diplomatic tools for building and maintaining international relationships.

While Jordan enjoys positive diplomatic relations with a range of nations, including Russia and China, the political, economic, social, and military linkages to the United States are powerful features of Jordan’s foreign policy, which are likely to restrain the long-term deepening of ties with major U.S. competitors. However, as the United States seeks to find creative ways to reduce Jordan’s dependencies on foreign assistance, Jordan’s leadership is skilled at identifying and pursuing perceived alternative sources of aid, like China. The challenge, however, is that Jordan’s domestic struggles are such that any alternatives to the United States would need to address a number of overlapping priorities including security, economy, and regime stability.

Jordan in China’s Foreign Policy

Jordan has long been a convergence point for emerging areas of focus for the Chinese government, including international security, development, humanitarian, and post-conflict reconstruction. Its most strategic features—its geostrategic location and stability—have made Jordan a magnet for investment, development, and aid aiming to bolster the nation’s fragile, but essential, stability. This has earned Jordan the reputation as an “oasis of peace” in the Middle East region among Chinese foreign ministry officials.³

Since unveiling the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China saw opportunity in Jordan as a gateway to the Levant region.⁴ Though Amman offered China little in the way of material resource benefits, Jordan’s stability, underpinned largely by a robust defense relationship with the United States, provided a strategic platform from which Beijing could pursue its political, diplomatic, and economic interests in neighboring Israel, Syria, Iraq, and the Arab Gulf. Many of Beijing’s regional investments, interconnectivity projects, and economic projects either involved Jordan or, in the least, depended on its stability. And, while Jordan lacked the oil, water, and other major resources of its neighbors, Jordan remains one of the few nations with dependable and predictable stability and a political leadership postured to improve ties with great powers.

The Sino-Jordanian bilateral relationship is largely built upon a robust bilateral trade relationship. China is Jordan’s second-largest import partner and third-largest trade partner, behind Saudi Arabia and the United States. Over the last 25 years, Chinese exports to Jordan have risen annually at an average rate of 13.5 percent, growing from $135 million in 1995 to over $3 billion by 2020.⁵ More recently, Chinese top exports to Jordan consist of clothing and apparel, machinery, and electronics, which has given Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei a major foothold in the Jordanian market through partnerships with Jordan’s largest telecommunications provider—Zain. Meanwhile, during the same window of time, Jordanian exports to China, largely chemicals, textiles, and metals, have grown annually at a rate of 14.1 percent from $20.5 million in 1995 to an estimated $426 million in 2020.⁶

Jordan as a Gateway

Under King Abdullah II, China-Jordan relations have made modest progress over the past two decades. In his first trip as King of Jordan to Beijing in 1999, King Abdullah and Chinese President Jiang Zemin signed the China-Jordan Joint Communique, which laid the foundation for bilateral political, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and security ties.⁷ At the root of the communique lay three core issues that would orient China’s long-term relationship with Jordan: the Israel-Palestinian peace process, regional security and stability, and Jordan’s domestic development, stability, and security.⁸ For two decades, China has recognized Jordan’s role in the Israel-Palestinian peace process and extended rhetorical support for the Palestinian people. In turn, at moments, Jordan has sought for China to play a stronger role in the Israel-Palestinian peace process.⁹ China also viewed Jordan as an influential voice of moderation in the region and a partner for safeguarding regional peace and security.¹⁰

Following the Arab Spring and prior to Xi’s rise to power, China struggled to find its footing in the Middle East. Beijing watched with anxiety as revolutions toppled regimes across the region and, in China’s view, destabilized the region. China’s non-interference policy enabled Beijing to pragmatically foster relations with new governments across the Arab World. But, in the midst of the crisis, Beijing saw little incentive to get entangled in the complex political environment and, instead, waited for the dust to settle—with the exception of Libya and Syria.¹¹

China relied heavily on its relationship with the Arab League to maneuver the political crises of the region. China did not seek to get embroiled and entangled in the region’s politics and looked to the Arab League, as the principal representative body of the Arab world, to advise or inform its own position on the UN Security Council in Middle Eastern affairs. In Libya, at the behest of the League, China voted to abstain on UN Resolution 1973 which greenlit NATO’s intervention in Libya and set the stage for the overthrow of President Muamar Ghaddafi. The Chinese leadership, under Hu Jintao, facing domestic backlash for its role in Libya, sought to correct its course in its handling of the unfolding Syrian civil war in late 2011.¹² This would, however, put China in opposition to the Arab League, including Jordan, over the question of Syria.

In November 2011, the Arab League suspended the Syrian government’s membership and initiated sweeping sanctions aiming to pressure Assad in response to the violent crackdown on protests across Syria.  Then, in February 2012, the Arab League member states submitted a draft resolution calling for international punitive sanctions against Syria. Breaking from the Arab League, China vetoed the UNSC resolution in opposition to the Arab League, setting the stage for a period of tense political relations.¹³ Over the next two years, China-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) political relations would regress over the question of Syria culminating in Saudi Arabia giving up its Security Council seat in 2013 in protest over the lack of progress in Syria and Iran. In turn, Jordan was elected to the UNSC to take Saudi’s seat.¹⁴

Following his rise to power in March 2013, President Xi Jinping prioritized repairing China’s relationship with the Arab world through the extension of its Belt and Road Initiative and bolstering energy cooperation with the region. Jordan, in comparison to its Saudi neighbor, was a more willing partner. Despite Jordan’s own opposition to Assad’s growing violence which drove hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees into Jordan, China and Jordan saw each other as pragmatic partners on the global stage with nearly a decade of good relations. For King Abdullah, President Xi represented a potential geopolitical ally and mediator in regional affairs, namely the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Syrian civil war. In their first meeting in 2013, King Abdullah pressed  Xi Jinping for China, as a “friend of Jordan and the Middle East,” to play an active role in resolving the Syrian war and the Israel-Palestine conflict.¹⁵ Meanwhile, from Xi’s view, King Abdullah was a proven leader who weathered the Arab Spring and presented a gateway through which China could gain political support as it began the process of rebuilding ties with the broader Arab world.

The Golden Years

Jordan’s relationship with China reached its height in 2015, fueled by bilateral ambitions to advance Jordan’s geostrategic position in the Levant as an economic hub for regional reconstruction and an access point for Chinese companies to expand business and industry ties in the region. Several key developments during this period reinforced bilateral exuberance over the orientation of the relationship: 1) Jordan’s decision to join the BRI, 2) major Chinese investment commitments to Jordan, and 3) the integration of Jordan into a broader regional Chinese MENA foreign policy.

BRI and Strategic Cooperation

The first major development in the bilateral relationship was Jordan’s decision to join the Belt and Road Initiative. In 2015, Jordan and China signed a bilateral strategic cooperation agreement, which outlined an ambitious plan for political, economic, social, military, and security cooperation across a range of sectors and projects valued at $7 billion.¹⁶ The strategic partnership built on the 1999 Joint Communique and underscored long-term plans for bilateral coordination on regional and international affairs, including military, security, and non-traditional security issues.

Sino-Jordanian Areas of Cooperation

Cooperation Type:17	Description:
Bilateral Relations	Bolstering state-to-state engagement at all levels of government
Mutual Respect for Non-Interference	Support for each other’s core interests: China recognized Jordan’s right to its security and stability, and Jordan reaffirmed the one-China policy with regard to Taiwan
Economic Cooperation	Economic and trade cooperation and promotion
Infrastructure Investment	Investment across railways, roads, communications, electricity, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as in the fields of seawater desalination, garbage disposal, oil shale, nuclear energy, and renewable energy development and utilization
Fiscal Cooperation	Aligning finance, customs, taxation, and investment to bolster bilateral trade and investments, as well as joint financial institutions
Military & Defense Cooperation	International military education training (IMET) exchanges, joint trainings, military equipment, and defense industry cooperation
Intelligence Cooperation	Strengthening the exchange and sharing of intelligence between security, intelligence, judicial, and law enforcement agencies
Education, Cultural, and Technology Exchanges	Promote fields of culture, education, science and technology, news, tourism, health, and sports
City-to-City Cooperation	Bolster city-to-city cooperation between Jordanian and Chinese cities and strengthen exchanges and cooperation between the two countries
International Cooperation	International cooperation in international institutions and the United Nations
Cooperation on Regional Stability	Cooperation in the management and resolution of major international and regional issues.
China-Inter-Arab Cooperation	Carry out dialogue and cooperation and achieve common development, as well as continue to work together to promote the construction and development of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum

Chinese commitments for economic development and investment

The highly visible agreement signaled a significant step in the bilateral relationship and paved the way for the second major development in the relationship: China’s promise of key investments in Jordanian infrastructure, totaling more than $7 billion. These commitments included a new China-Jordan university, $2.5 billion of investment into the construction of a national railway, and an oil pipeline linking Basra in Iraq to Aqaba, Jordan’s southern port city.¹⁸ Finally, China’s flagship investment—the Attarat Power Plant project, a shale-oil power plant in southeast Jordan—was set to be the largest private Chinese infrastructure project in the BRI outside of China, with China financing $1.6 billion out of the total $2.1 billion.

In total, China planned some 29 development projects in Jordan in or after 2015.¹⁹ The vast majority of finances committed were to Jordan’s energy and infrastructure sectors. In addition to planned projects, Chinese companies purchased majority stakes in Jordan’s Arab Potash Company, one of the world’s leading producers of potash, as well as the Attarat Power Company, which leads the construction and management of Jordan’s Attarat plant.

Integrating Jordan into a regional Sino-Arab Framework

Concurrent with its negotiations with Jordan, the Chinese government brokered a total of 13 bilateral agreements with Arab counterparts and set the stage for a broader Sino-Arab regional framework, the third major development in the Jordan-China relationship. China’s multilateral diplomatic offensive in the Middle East region since 2013 has aimed to bolster regional stability, industrialization, and development and in turn to deepen ties with its principal energy suppliers and commercial markets. These issues featured more deeply in the Chinese government’s first Arab Policy Paper, which outlined Beijing’s foreign policy approach to the Arab world and would set the stage for Xi’s first major tour of the region with meetings in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran in January 2016. This first trip aimed to build support for the integration of the Belt and Road Initiative with broader regional development efforts, such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and Jordan’s Vision 2025. In his first address to the Arab League, Xi pledged an estimated $55 billion in loans to Arab states to support regional industrialization and infrastructure ($15 billion), energy cooperation ($10 billion), and joint investment ($20 billion) under the the BRI framework.²⁰ Then, again, in 2018, Xi pledged more than $23 billion in loans, aid, and investments to promote stability and development across the Middle East, including Jordan.²¹

Jordan’s relationship with China fits within Xi’s vision of a regional framework for Sino-Arab cooperation, and Jordan engaged closely with China both bilaterally and multilaterally through the China-Arab State Cooperation Forum (CASCF), the principal multilateral framework for Sino-Arab relations. China aimed to bolster Jordan’s capacity as a potential economic hub for the post-conflict reconstruction of Syria. And, as part of President Xi Jinping’s $20 billion loan program for the Middle East, Jordan was poised to receive further Chinese investments bolstering its infrastructure, energy, trade, and productive sectors, as well as $15 million in humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees.²²

China’s economic and investment focus in the MENA region, however, has focused since 2018 more heavily on building economic, energy, and investment ties with Egypt and the GCC states, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, the Levantine states—Jordan, Syrian, and Lebanon—and Yemen received only $90 million in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance, and a handful of commitments have yet to come to fruition.

Strategic Miscalculations

The rhetorical momentum built over China-Jordan relations from 2015 to 2020 failed to produce any mature strategic relationship and has been beset by several strategic miscalculations: a) China’s inability to deliver on strategic development commitments, b) the imbalance in aid, and c) a latecomer disadvantage in the development of military and defense relations.

Failure to Deliver: The Case of Attarat

Jordan and China faced significant hurdles in implementing their several highly publicized projects and investments, despite reiterative attempts to move forward. For example, China’s $2.5 billion investment in a Jordanian national railway, a project to connect Jordan’s nascent railway system with a broader MENA rail network and eventually with the China-Europe freight network, seems to have faded from public attention as other regional partners, particularly Saudi Arabia, have moved to finance the project in the absence of progress.²³ And, even where projects have progressed, namely the Attarat oil shale project, implementation has been the subject of extensive scrutiny and has put the Jordanian government and Chinese investors on opposing sides of international arbitration.

In 2014, Jordan signed a power-purchase agreement (PPA) with the Attarat Power Company (APAC), a conglomeration of Estonian, Malaysian, and Jordanian shareholders for the development of an oil shale plant in the south, a project valued at an estimated $2.2 billion, which would provide for some 15 percent of Jordan’s domestic energy needs. The agreement positioned Jordan to diversify its energy sources and reduce its dependency on energy imports, which at the time were estimated at 96 percent. Because China was only initially involved in the construction of the plant, it was not party to the initial PPA negotiations. Beijing’s decision, however, to assume a majority stake in Attarat would make it the primary beneficiary of Jordan’s energy purchases under the PPA.

Jordan, which hosts the world’s fourth-largest oil shale resource concentration, and the Attarat project gained China’s attention in the lead-up to the bilateral strategic cooperation agreement in 2015. In 2013, China’s Guangdong Power Engineering Corporation won the tender for the engineering, procurement, and construction of the Attarat plant and broke ground shortly thereafter.²⁴ Under the 2015 agreement, the two nations agreed to deepen cooperation on core infrastructure projects, which included oil shale extraction, opening the door to greater Chinese access to Jordan’s largely untapped reserves.²⁵ In 2016, China gained a prominent foothold in Jordan’s energy market with the purchase of a 45 percent stake in the Attarat project by Guangdong Energy Group, a Chinese state-owned enterprise.²⁶ Then, in 2017, the Chinese government approved $1.6 billion in financing for the project, insured by Sinosure.²⁷ While not the majority owner, the Chinese government’s effective role as shareholder, financer, and guarantor of the Attarat project made Beijing the de-facto head of the project—the largest BRI financed private infrastructure project outside of China.

The implementation of the Attarat project become the subject of international arbitration after the Jordanian Government and the National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) accused APAC and its affiliated industries of “gross unfairness” in the electricity tariff owed by NEPCO, which is currently under review by the International Chamber of Commerce.²⁸ The terms of the PPA, according to experts, would ultimately cost Jordan an estimated $280 million annually in taxpayer dollars, a significant expenditure in the midst of Jordan’s current economic fragility.²⁹

While the ICC has yet to make a ruling at the time of writing, the pathway forward for China and Jordan is bound to be rough despite the outcome. The removal of the contract would undermine one of China’s leading BRI investments and may generate some underlying tension between Beijing and Jordan. If the contract is not terminated, the Attarat project could be a source of residual consternation between the two and fuel further criticism of China’s BRI projects as “debt traps” from Western observers. In either case, the final ruling is bound to create political challenges for King Abdullah, who will likely be required to engage with China on the matter of Attarat should the issue worsen.

Imbalance in Foreign Aid Provision

China’s approach to aid differs significantly in substance and approach from that of the United States, Jordan’s largest financial donor. Rather than large sums of financial assistance, China finances development assistance through grants (or donations), interest-free loans, or concessional loans.³⁰ And, unlike Western aid which utilizes local contractors, projects are typically owned, managed, and implemented by Chinese enterprises.³¹ But, unlike Western financial assistance, Chinese aid is often perceived by Arab states as having fewer, if any, “strings attached,” such as human rights or political reforms. As a relatively new actor in the Middle East, China’s approach to aid and development has had to compete with decades of U.S. financial assistance to Jordan, which includes large sums of economic assistance, budgetary support for state institutions, and block sums of military assistance. For comparison, China’s global foreign aid was estimated to range from $4.8 billion to $5.9 billion in 2019, whereas U.S. global foreign aid in 2019 (not including military and security assistance) reached $31.2 billion, over $1 billion of which was provided to Jordan.³² The Kingdom has grown accustomed to robust partnerships like its current five-year Memorandum of Understanding with the United States valued at a minimum $1.275 billion in annual economic and military assistance.

Competition for Defense Relations

Jordan’s bilateral relationship with China also exists within the shadow of the former’s defense partnership with the United States and NATO. These relationships, whether stated or not, define the parameters of acceptable cooperation with China. More specifically, Jordan is careful not to undermine its relationship with the United States, particularly the defense relationship, by crossing certain red lines: extensive military cooperation with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the deployment of significant PLA defense assets, and any decision which could jeopardize the interoperability Jordanian and U.S. forces.

Other potential red lines include certain types of investment in strategic technology and infrastructure which could pose threats to U.S. strategic military interests and assets, as is the case in debates over Chinese investments in Israel’s technology sector and core infrastructure.³³ In the case of Jordan, such investments could include Jordan’s purchase of certain types of Chinese military technology as well as large infrastructure projects which could increase Jordan’s debt to China, such as the Attarat project.

To date, China’s military ties with Jordan are relatively limited. Chinese military and defense firms regularly participate in Jordan’s annual Special Forces Exhibition, which features new technology for governments and militaries. Jordan’s Royal Defense College maintains residual ties with the PLA National Defense University, largely focused on international military education and training (IMET) programs. China also maintains some foreign military sales, the most recent of which was the transfer of $24 million in defense equipment, according to SIPRI.³⁴ These data overlap with Jordan’s 2015/2016 purchase of six Chinese-made CH-4B unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which the Royal Jordanian Air Force listed for resale in 2019, reportedly due to their bad quality.³⁵

Balancing Strategic Priorities

Another major source of challenges in the bilateral relationship is tied to a fundamental misalignment of strategic priorities. To Jordan, maintaining domestic stability and national security are the pillars of its broader safety and stability, which have largely been underwritten by foreign economic and security assistance, and set Jordan’s expectations and preference for international partners. While China has enthusiastically offered economic support and investment into Jordan’s economy, it has backed away from substantive support to Jordan for its strategic security priorities, including on key issues like the Israel-Arab peace process and the security of its northern border with Syria.

China and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

A centerpiece of China-Jordanian diplomatic relations toward regional issues is China’s longstanding support for Palestine and Jordan’s role as the custodian of the Jerusalem Holy Sites. China has a long history of solidarity with Palestine extending back to the 1940s, but in the recent decade, Sino-Palestinian relations have become increasingly complicated by China’s own burgeoning economic relations with Israel and increasing tension on the ground, which have resulted in severe outbreaks of violent conflict since 2010. The Chinese government maintains strong rhetoric in favor of Palestine, actively criticizing the building of Israeli settlements within the West Bank, calling for a two-state solution, and, in periods of escalated tensions, urging Israel to show restraint in its operations against Gaza. And, in its bilateral engagements with the Palestinian Authority and multilateral engagements with the Arab world regarding the peace process, China actively elevates Jordan’s diplomatic role, even when it was diminished in the Trump Administration’s “Deal of the Century.”

Over time, however, rhetoric has not translated into substantive action in periods of significant escalation in the conflict, reflecting a limited ability to play a leading role in conflict mediation. As Yang Chen argues, China “lacks strategic influence on solving the Palestine-Israel issue, let alone to play a decisive role.”³⁶ Yet, in 2021, China stepped in and offered a strategy—a “four-point proposal”—to de-escalate tensions during the Gaza war, which emphasized the need for a ceasefire, humanitarian assistance, and UN action toward a two-state solution. Instead, the immediacy of Arab diplomacy, led by Egypt and Jordan and backed by Western partners, was deployed to mediate the crisis. While Chinese observers, like Yang, argue that China can play a greater political role, there is a legitimacy problem associated with China’s rhetorical support but lack of follow-through. In short, China’s strategy of strategic balancing between Israel and Palestine has constrained Beijing’s maneuverability during periods of mediation, which often falls to Israel’s neighbors and the United States. Until China can actively contribute to ongoing efforts for the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it will struggle to gain regional legitimacy as a power broker. But its continued support to Jordan as a primary mediator for the conflict will give Jordan a necessary boost of legitimacy over its Arab counterparts who, at times, have sought to exert greater influence over the Palestinian political process.

Counterterrorism and the Rise of ISIS

The emergence of ISIS in 2014 and a series of attacks against Jordanian forces both inside and outside of its borders placed counterterrorism operations at the center of Jordan’s security apparatus and cooperation with international partners. Jordan and China signed their historic cooperation agreement in 2015 just nine months after the gruesome murder of Jordanian Captain Muath al-Kasabeh by the Islamic State, a major catalyst in Jordan’s decision to enhance its participation in international efforts to counter and defeat ISIS. Under the 2015 agreement, Jordan and China agreed to “strengthen cooperation…between the security, intelligence, judicial and law enforcement agencies of the two countries to combat terrorism, organized crime and transnational crime,” which, for Jordan, meant cooperation on the defeat of ISIS and countering cross-border smuggling from Syria.³⁷ This understanding was also aligned with China’s foreign policy to the Arab world, which featured military cooperation in the fight against terrorism as central pillars in Sino-Arab peace and security efforts. China’s 2016 Arab Policy Paper reinforces that China supports “the efforts of Arab States in countering terrorism and support their counter-terrorism capacity building,” and the Paper goes on to state that: “The Chinese side believes that counter-terrorism needs comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and root causes… China is ready to strengthen anti-terrorism exchanges and cooperation with Arab countries to establish a long-term security cooperation mechanism, strengthen policy dialogue and intelligence information exchange, and carry out technical cooperation and personnel training to jointly address the threat of international and regional terrorism.”³⁸

Despite these commitments, Chinese counterterrorism cooperation with Jordan have not materialized. This is due in part to a fundamental miscalculation of Jordan’s national interests and incentive structures. While Beijing sought to build Jordan into an economic hub for Syrian reconstruction, it failed to recognize that its own interests in Syria, namely ensuring the survival of the Syrian government and the restoration of its national sovereignty, would put it at odds with Jordan whose principal security concerns were exacerbated by Syrian government policies and actions.

For Jordan, the Syrian government has been a primary source of instability since 2011. During the civil war, state crackdowns on protestors gave way to violent military operations in southern Syria driving hundreds of thousands of refugees into Jordan, most of whom remain and do not intend on returning anytime soon.³⁹ After the defeat of ISIS in southern Syria, Iranian-linked militias, operating under the umbrella of state consent, gained a foothold on Jordan’s border as early as 2018. And, in the years following, these groups have created transnational narcotics trade, which uses Jordan as a thoroughfare for trafficking drugs to the Arab Gulf. ⁴⁰ As Jordan worked through international and regional mechanisms to address its concerns in Syria, the Syrian government, particularly the Syrian military, has proven to be unreliable and, in some cases, actively involved in narcotics smuggling into Jordan.⁴¹

China’s support for the Syrian government is grounded in Beijing’s pursuit of the protection and restoration of the Syrian state’s legitimacy, and it has upheld this view in its engagements with Jordan. When ISIS captured large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, including strategic positions on Jordan’s border, China chose not to get embroiled in the U.S.-led counter-terrorism effort and instead called for the international community to bolster the capabilities of the Syrian Army, a red flag for many Arab and Western actors who contested the legitimacy of the Syrian regime. China’s rhetorical commitment to fight terrorism never materialized into tangible support for Jordan. Instead, Amman relied on the United States and its European allies to address principal security challenges.

China is not willing to become Jordan’s security guarantor and assume the longitudinal responsibility for Jordan’s security, a role that the U.S. has underwritten for decades. Beijing has, however, reinforced its support for Syrian military counterterrorism operations, not Jordanian operations. The misalignment between China and Jordan on this issue has posed challenges to China’s own interest in preserving the Assad regime due to Jordan’s accusations of the Syrian military’s role in some of the destabilizing activities on its border, including support for narcotics smugglers who killed a Jordanian soldier in 2022. China’s rhetorical consistency in its support for Jordan on regional issues never translated into reliable follow-through on Beijing’s commitments. And, from the perspective of Jordan, this made China an unreliable security partner.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated China’s diplomatic outreach to the Arab world, including Jordan, through medical diplomacy. China’s rapid economic recovery and scaling of its medical production industries in response to the pandemic enabled Beijing to leverage strategic donations of medical goods to the Middle East to bolster its international image and build trust with Arab partners. In June 2020, China donated some 60,000 face masks, 10,000 gloves, 20,000 testing kits, and thermometers to Jordan’s COVID-19 response.⁴² In January 2021, Jordan joined a growing number of Arab countries that approved the emergency use of China’s Sinopharm vaccine and participated in clinical trials.⁴³ In April 2021, Jordan received its first traunch of Sinopharm vaccines purchased from the Chinese government, followed by a donation of an undisclosed number of vaccines by the Chinese government later that month. Then, in November 2021, nearly eight months later, China donated an additional 500,000 vaccines to Jordan.⁴⁴

China’s post-pandemic diplomatic offensive offered a powerful resurgence of rhetoric and widely publicized donations, particularly as Jordan and China’s 45^th anniversary of bilateral ties drew closer. The relationship, however, failed to see any significant progress on the pillars of the strategic cooperation agreement, with the exception of trade, which reached an estimated $2.2 billion in volume in 2021.⁴⁵

Instead, China has made significant progress in warming ties with the GCC countries after various years of Beijing’s courting. Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have opened their doors to Beijing, bolstering energy cooperation, expanding bilateral trade, incentivizing investment, and fostering military ties. Anchored in these two partners, China has placed significantly more weight on its relationships with the wealthier, oil-rich countries to advance its interests in the region, overlooking Jordan and the war-torn Levant.

Jordan and China will likely continue to amplify bilateral rhetoric of friendship and trade, which has underpinned the relationship for 45 years. China’s rhetorical support for Palestine remains a cornerstone in the diplomatic relationship and will likely continue into the future. Though, for the time being, the 2015 strategic relationship has failed to produce any tangible evidence of deepened ties beyond rhetoric. The projects like the Attarat Power Plant are powerful examples of the challenges China faces as it expands BRI into low-to-middle-income countries like Jordan, which continue to struggle with decades of conflict, refugee crises, and economic deterioration. And Jordan’s fear of moving further into indebtedness to China over Attarat could inadvertently trigger some forms of public backlash or even bilateral tension. Moving forward, for China, maintaining relations with Jordan will be a matter of relationship management, given the Kingdom’s ties to the U.S. If the United States follows through on its commitment to reduce its military footprint in the Middle East, this will create new opportunities for China, as Jordan looks for other sources of support to offset its economic crisis. China has proven time and again willing to test the waters diplomatically and invest more political and diplomatic capital to bolster its relationship with Jordan.