West Asia has emerged as a central theatre in China’s evolving global strategy. Historically, Beijing pursued a resource driven foreign policy in the region, priortising energy imports for its domestic industries and infrastructure development. However, as China’s capital investments, trade volumes, and expatriate populations across West Asia expanded, Beijing confronted a structural security dilemma: Economic exposure cannot remain decoupled from power projection indefinitel

Throughout history, geography has influenced the fate of empires. For many centuries, lands that lack coasts have been described as landlocked or held captive to the land due to the need to pay tolls to pass through the territory of their neighbour country to access an ocean to use for shipping goods out of their country. The depiction of landlocked territories as prisoners or land-bound will soon change in the near future; when the new Silk Road is completed in April 2026, t