China is forging a deadly new alliance of autocracies

Enemies of democracy are consolidating links with new global power they expect to be in their corner

Printed in austere typeface, overlaid on a rich green, the colour of Saudi Arabia, last week came a surprise announcement. A joint communiqué issued by the Saudi national security adviser and a key figure in the Iranian state’s foreign policy apparatus contained a declaration that might, at least theoretically, mean the end of four decades of enmity.

The two countries agreed to resume diplomatic relations, to re-open their embassies and to respect the sovereignty of the other. They also agreed that their foreign ministers will meet and that they will arrange for the return of their various ambassadors, all with the intention of enhancing bilateral relations.

Some perceptive commentators had seen this sort of thing coming for a while: that the Saudis, increasingly alienated by the West, particularly under Joe Biden’s US presidency, were looking for a route out of regional confrontation with Iran, whose Houthi proxies in Yemen frequently bombard Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones, and who, the Saudi defence establishment concludes, cannot be militarily defeated.

But it was the third signatory on this statement, that of the Chinese foreign policy supremo Wang Yi, that seemed to astonish commentators the most. This whole agreement, between two decades-long enemies, took place under Chinese auspices.

This should not have come as a shock. Indeed, Beijing’s involvement in the negotiations was part of a deep and long-standing Chinese goal to consolidate large parts of the world under its effective leadership. For years, it has been working to peel away US allies, aid America’s enemies, and generally reorder global governance and diplomacy with Chinese domination in mind.

It is obviously good when countries engage in dialogue and long-running hostilities are muted. But something much more profound is going on. It is something that I predicted in my recent book, Authoritarian Century. I called it “multilateral autocratisation”: dictators of all stripes are increasingly bunching up and working together in a more formalised capacity for their own collective ends. It could even be termed a sort of alliance.

In this latest arrangement, over time there could well be practical economic consequences that are not positive for the West given that both Iran and Saudi Arabia are major oil producers. The United States might be largely self-sufficient in oil and gas, but its allies in Europe and Asia are not.

China has for years gradually bought up the leadership of various resource-producing countries in Asia and Africa, gaining a stranglehold over certain critical resources. Is it planning to do something similar in the Middle East with oil?

China’s reputation in the region (despite its genocide against Uyghur Muslims) is already better than America’s. The US is widely seen as an imperial power that causes chaos, while Beijing says that it is only interested in investment and development. For obvious reasons, Chinese officials never preach to other autocracies about human rights or democracy. This must be comforting for rulers who want to continue mounting repression while getting rich.

But China’s ambitions are greater than resource domination. In February, it inaugurated a body that it calls the International Organisation for Mediation which, its officials say, hopes to be a significant force in the settlement of all international disputes.

Later, China issued a Global Security Initiative Concept Paper that aims to “eliminate the root causes of international conflicts”. But what these documents say does not necessarily matter. China’s leaders do not believe in the rule of law or any ordinary concept of diplomacy or arbitration.

They believe that might equals right. And that might affords the mighty the capacity to define words and concepts to their own advantage. Thus, any Chinese plan is a “peace plan”. Only Chinese-sponsored diplomacy is “legitimate”. Only international bodies that do Chinese bidding have true “rule of law”.

China has now even unveiled a “peace plan” for Ukraine. It is not fundamentally serious, but the Ukrainian authorities have felt duty bound to acknowledge it, because China is (at least in theory in the Western press) neutral between Ukraine and Russia. Xi Jinping is expected to speak with President Volodymyr Zelensky in the coming days. The truth, of course, is that all these autocracies implicitly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the most blatant act of aggression in Europe since the Second World War. The world’s tyrannies increasingly see themselves as being on the same page: they are tired of the constraints imposed by international law and international courts. They might well prefer to operate under a Chinese framework, where things are done differently, and everything is cosily settled by fellow tyrannies.

China says that it does not follow the “American way of geopolitics”. But as it upends and subverts international institutions to create a new Chinacentric mode of diplomacy, it can hardly claim with any credibility to be acting out of anything but self-interest.

Autocracies now know they can look to China to support them in their human rights abuses and pushing back the world’s democracies. The enemies of democracy are consolidating their relationship with a new global power – one which they expect to be in their corner.

We are entering a dangerous new period: a period in which the world’s autocracies sharpen their skills at hypocrisy. Old conflicts may well be parked or minimised, because a new and more essential one is at hand. That is the conflict between autocracy and democracy, between a Chinese-led world and an American-led one. And institutions and treaties will be at its very heart.

It is up to us whether we decide that the superficial result – one of increased diplomatic communication between enemies like Iran and Saudi Arabia – is worth the Chinese domination of international diplomacy.

Azeem Ibrahim is a director at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College and author of Authoritarian Century: Omens of a Post-liberal Future