IN-DEPTH: CCP’s ‘Capitalistic Authoritarianism’ Is Its Influence Machine in Middle East: Expert

A man holds a local newspaper reporting on the China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore ties, in the Iranian capital Tehran on March 11, 2023. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images

The Chinese Communist Party’s “capitalistic authoritarianism” aligns with the designs of the Middle East’s autocratic regimes and is aiding Beijing’s foreign policy in the region, according to Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, the founder of New York-based Ideas Beyond Borders.

Authoritarian capitalism is the operation of a capitalist economy, on the one hand, combined with the absence or erosion of democracy and civil liberties on the other, according to Daniel Kinderman, an Associate Professor and Director of European Studies at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware.

Out of 21 Middle Eastern and North African nations, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance classifies 17 as authoritarian regimes. At the same time, Israel is classed as a democracy, Jordan and Morocco as hybrid regimes, and Tunisia is classified as a weak democracy.

A largely authoritarian Middle East, according to Al Mutar, forms the context for Chinese foreign policy in the region.“So really the people who benefit the most are the aristocrats in the region, and authoritarians,” Al Mutar said in an interview with NTD’s “China in Focus” on April 11.

“And that is the version that China is selling—that on the one hand, you can control your people with their surveillance technology, and you can copy what they call ’the Chinese Model,' which is a version of advanced capitalistic authoritarianism,” he said.

Kinderman said that China, under Xi Jinping, is an “authoritarian capitalist” regime that “mixes developmental with predatory elements and remains highly interventionist.” It is characterized by “hardened political repression … with very marginal economic reforms.” In this model, the “party-state” encroaches on the markets.

He described the Chinese model as “a blending of functions and interests of state and private ownership—and politicized interactions with foreign capital.”

Middle East History

The Middle East formed the battlefield between multiple countries during the cold war, according to Al Mutar, and the Soviets developed massive influence operations in the region. The Middle East is now at the forefront of Chinese efforts to expand their influence.

Al Mutar said that China’s capitalistic authoritarianism is lucrative for the autocratic regimes in the Middle East, because under it “people are not ... starving to death, they can still have their car and they can also buy their Louis Vuitton and, at the same time, be under the control of the state, and the state [is] able to control not necessarily the means of production, but really all people’s movements and ideas.”

According to Al Mutar, China—“unfortunately”—enjoys a positive reputation in the Middle East, because it doesn’t have a “hostile history” in the region like European nations and, in particular, the United States.

“So that’s how they’re kind of portraying themselves to the region, is that ‘We are a peaceful broker. We’re not trying to interfere in your culture! We are just here to make everybody get along.’ And many of the aristocrats—they love it,” said Al Mutar.

Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest suppliers of oil to China, and Beijing managed to broker a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March—something the United States was unable to achieve. Al Mutar said this was “something very rare,” and that China is utilizing the overall situation—not to impose their influence, but rather to utilize it to achieve more dominance in the region, and to compete with the United States.

“I mean, the Chinese are telling them: ‘Well, we kill our journalists too! So you can do whatever you want,” Al Mutar told China in Focus host, Tiffany Meier. “So there’s this kind of package in which there is limited intervention, and most of it is just focused on economics, while the devil is in the details, in terms of selling their surveillance technology, trying to utilize all of the resources within the Middle East.”

Women wearing headscarves walk near Tajrish Square in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on July 12, 2022. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images

Surveillance Technology

China’s model of techno-authoritarianism involves signing up for China’s surveillance technology, and is popular among Middle-Eastern regimes for that same reason. This is already playing out in the region in different ways, said Al Mutar.

“I mean, the first country that really signed up for surveillance technology with China was Egypt. And over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a very limited presence of civil society, a lot of people, activists or dissidents, within these countries are arrested due to the fact that the government now has better tracking—they’re able to really intercept a lot of the communications to stop any form of political opposition,” he said.

Euronews reported on Thursday that more and more women in Iran are refusing to wear the mandatory hijab head scarf following the mass anti-government protests that started last year. Iranian authorities have announced that they'll use video surveillance to identify women violators.

Al Mutar said he believes this trend will continue. “So what China already has inside China, from social credit system to advanced tracking, and what is sometimes called the Chinese firewall, we can easily see it’s being applied heavily in the Middle East.”

This also means that people from free societies will face extreme difficulties in communicating their ideas directly to the people of the Middle East, he said.

“The only ideas available are the ones that the Chinese government wants, or their allies in the Middle East,” said Al Mutar. “And I think that’s something that’s really scary, and not many people are talking about.”

U.S. Army soldiers stand outside their armored vehicle on a joint base shared with the Iraqi army south of Mosul, Iraq on Feb. 23, 2017. Khalid Mohammed/AP

US vs China

The ideological difference between China and the United States is playing out politically in the Middle East. U.S. culture, which allows people the freedom to be critical of authority, is perceived as a threat in the region, according to Al Mutar.

“When you see American television, you see people making fun of their government, people criticizing their government. Many of these kinds of bespoke messages, the things that are not only direct, have an effect on populations at large,” he said.

Chinese Communist Party culture, on the other hand, is much more heavily state-controlled and completely uncritical of the regime—it is essentially a celebration of the party.

Al Mutar said that open-society media, like that of the United States, “where people see YouTube and see the videos from around the world of how life is outside,” was the inspiration behind the Arab Spring—a series of anti-government protests and uprisings that spread in the Arab world in the early 2010s.

“And that is something that’s kind of reducing more and more as many of these [surveillance] technologies are being implemented,” he said.

The difference between what the United States was bringing to the societies in the Middle East and what the Chinese are bringing to the region is massive, according to the refugee entrepreneur. He said the United States didn’t have a “cohesive idea” of supporting or understanding the culture in the Middle East.

“I mean, the introduction for many Iraqis—which is a country that never really had a democracy, and never had these ideas discussed in public. The introduction ... for them was coming through your tanks and your soldiers. And that’s generally not the best way to introduce a country to democracy. It’s not! It’s not coming through the lenses of television, of communication, or cultural exchange,” said Al Mutar, adding that many across the Middle East thus came to hold a negative impression of democracy.

In contrast, they are easily able to adjust to the China model—which is authoritarian and, culturally, closer to that of the region, he said.

“They’re telling them well, we exactly want the things that you want, we’re not going to interfere in your human rights record, or the way you treat women in Iran, or do anything in Egypt. We’re gonna keep the status quo as it is,” said Al Mutar.

“And for many of the aristocrats that’s like the best deal ever, in which you can maintain the Chinese investments, you can have the Huawei and the 5G. And again, this gives the illusion that the people are having a decent life, while at the same time [the state is] having absolute control over them. So I think that puts China at a great advantage.”