Prof. Pablo Sapag to ST: President Assad’s visit to China demonstrates that Syria’s allies are more influential in the new world order in the making

The recent visit by President Bashar Al-Assad and First Lady Asma Al-Assad to China has captured the attention of political analysts and observers all over the world as it constituted a milestone in the history of bilateral relations.

To shed more light on the importance of this event Syria Times interviewed, via WhatsApp, Prof. Pablo Sapag, an Associate Professor at Complutense University of Madrid and Author of “Syria in perspective” https://syriainperspective.com/

Sapag said that the visit didn’t just consolidate the even further a long-stand healthy bilateral relations between Syria and China, but indeed it told a lot more about today’s world. 

“Both countries have had solid diplomatic relations for the last 67 years so a state visit like this is logical and normal. In fact, President Assad had already visited China before in 2004 and Beijing has been a consistent ally of Syria during the terrorist war imposed on the country. Based on its knowledge of Syria and applying the Chinese foreign affairs principle of not interfering in others business, China consistently blocked all Western attempts to meddle in Syria in the UN Security Council. On the other hand, and as was stressed during President Assad’s encounter with President Xi Jingping, Syria is a very important ally in the global struggle against terrorism. China has benefited from the immense amount and high quality Syrian intelligence regarding transnational terrorism,” Sapag explained.   

He added: “Besides, there are very important economic links. China has been a long time investor in Syria, for example in the automobile sector, being already the leader in the Syrian market. In turn, Syria offers China its high quality agro industrial products and its geostrategic position, indispensable to develop China’s ambition program of a new Silk Road and Belt which necessarily has to pass through Syria. No doubt that these already strong economic links will develop further and will benefit Syria’s reconstruction process and China’s world-wide commercial interests”.  

He pointed out that it’s also very important to stress that both countries shared a common vision about a multilateral world based on relations of cooperation and not of conflict, relations of partnership instead of those of dominance or hegemonic dictate. This has to do with the values these two ancestral cultures, the Syrian and the Chinese ones, shared and project.  

“Taking all that into account, it is absolutely normal that Beijing and Damascus wanted to certify the good health of their relations by signing an agreement of a strategic partnership for development and security. For sure it will benefit both of them but also the whole world,” Sapag stressed.

He went on to say: “President Assad’s visit to China demonstrates that the only ones who are isolated in this new world in the making are the Western countries, which instigated the events in Syria and even though the internal and external political situation clearly demonstrates the righteous of the Syrian State cause, they persist in their policies of imposing unilateral coercive measures and of supporting armed groups that operate on their behalf stealing Syrian petrol, wheat and other valuable goods of the Syrian people”. 

Sapag asserted that as representatives of that same Syrian people, President Assad’s and First Lady Asma Al-Assad were warmly welcomed not just by the Chinese authorities but by the Chinese people. We saw it during the inauguration of the Asian Games in Hangzhou, but also when the First Lady shared at the university with Chinese students of Arabic and Arab issues.  

He clarified that the trip demonstrates not just that Syria has allies and good ones. It demonstrates that those allies are the most influential and relevant in the new world order in the making, Beside Syria, there are China, Russia, India, South Africa, Brazil and many others, including the Arab League countries.

Sapag made it clear that the State visit to China sheds light on the reality that Syria is in the right side of history, with the partners that count on this new multilateral world that prefers cooperation rather than invasions, aggressions, supremacy and all that the Western countries have been exporting since the era of colonization and exploitation.

President Assad’s visit to China has exposed that, he concluded.

Hamda Mustafa