Energy-hungry China breaks ground in Middle East

ZEBQIN, Lebanon, Nov 27 (Reuters) At the bottom of a deep pit gouged by a bulldozer, a Chinese soldier in a protective visor shovels aside earth to reveal an unexploded bomb left over from Israel's war with Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon.

Sweating at his perilous task in Zebqin village, 2nd Sergeant Liu Sinpshi is part of a 190-strong Chinese contingent in a UN peacekeeping force trying to stabilise the south.

The Chinese demining mission in Lebanon is a small sign of Beijing's rapidly expanding engagement in West Asia, where its voracious quest for secure energy supplies in the 21st century has sharpened its interest in regional stability.

China is striving to build economic and political ties in a region which the International Energy Agency expects to supply 70 percent of its oil imports by 2015, but in doing so it risks antagonising its key trading partner, the United States.

For China woos US allies such as Saudi Arabia with the same fervour it uses to court Iran, Syria and Sudan -- all at odds with the West and seen by Washington as ''sponsors of terrorism''.

From Tehran to Rabat, few capitals seem worried by China's growing weight, at least as a trading power, in a region where it had a low profile before becoming a net oil importer in 1993.

''Hegemony, domination, imperialism are associated with the United States and Europe. China is not seen that way,'' said Sami Baroudi, a Lebanese political scientist. ''Arabs appreciate its economic might, but don't see it as a political threat.'' NO QUESTIONS ASKED Ruling elites in Iran and the Arab world appreciate China's eagerness to do business without fussing about human rights and democracy. They prefer Beijing's calls for international dialogue on conflicts such as the Iran nuclear dispute to the unilateralist and militarist urges of the US administration.

Even those close to the West are frustrated by Washington's support for Israel, the chaos created by its Iraq invasion and its threats to those defying its plans to reshape the region.

Many also welcome China's stress on national sovereignty, one reason for its opposition in the UN Security Council to the Iraq war and more recently to tough trade sanctions against Iran or UN military intervention in Sudan's Darfur region.

Baroudi argues that ordinary Middle Easterners, not just their rulers, admire China for its explosive economic growth, which many believe -- rightly or wrongly -- has occurred without sacrificing social justice, law and order or traditional values.

In Egypt, a recent government poll showed China as the most favourably viewed non-Arab country, with 73 per cent of Egyptians seeing it as friendly and only 4 percent as hostile.

''China has no colonial ambitions in the past or now and it has emerged as an economic power with an interesting experience so in Egypt there is a strong tendency to establish relations in economic cooperation and energy projects,'' said Abdel-Raouf el-Reedy, who chairs the Egyptian Council on Foreign Relations.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who briefly allowed a climate of debate after he took power in 2000, soon made clear that reform of the state-dominated economy would take priority over political change in a policy that his liberal critics said was inspired by the ''Chinese model.'' Those critics argued that China, unlike Syria, had axed its ''old guard'' and had generated huge economic opportunities, whereas Damascus could offer nothing comparable to deflect demands for political, social and judicial reforms.

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