China has gained a major foothold in oil-rich Iraq, shaking up Western domination in fields from energy to construction, even as some warn that infrastructure projects could leave Baghdad in debt.
After decades of conflict, Iraq is “badly in need of foreign investment, and specifically investment in energy sector infrastructure,” said John Calabrese, a senior academic at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
China, with its soaring energy needs, has stepped in to fill that gap, and is expanding its presence in Iraq under a 2019 “oil for construction” deal.
Photo: AFP
Beijing has become one of the largest importers of Iraqi crude, and last year accounted for 44 percent of Iraq’s oil exports, Iraqi prime ministerial adviser Muzhar Saleh said.
State firm PetroChina has partnered with France’s TotalEnergies and Malaysia’s Petronas to exploit the Halfaya oilfield in southern Iraq.
“China is just getting started,” Chinese Ambassador to Iraq Cui Wei (崔巍) told journalists in a videoconference.
Photo: AFP
However, Beijing is interested in more than just Iraq’s trade potential, Calabrese said.
Beyond the “obvious commercial incentives” are China’s ambitions to “deeply entrench itself in a country and a region that the West, and especially the United States, has dominated,” he said.
Iraq is among the many partners in China’s vast Belt and Road Initiative, which Western leaders say risks saddling poorer countries with debt.
Baghdad is an “important cooperation partner” in the project, a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said, adding that Beijing had “actively participated in the reconstruction of Iraq’s economy.”
From 2013 to this year, Iraq was “the third most important” Belt and Road Initiative partner “for energy engagement,” according to a paper by Christoph Nedopil of the Green Finance and Development Center at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Under the 2019 “oil for construction” deal, building projects in Iraq are funded by the sale of 100,000 barrels per day of Iraqi oil to China.
One aspect of the agreement, inked while then-Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi visited Beijing, was a deal to build schools.
Two Chinese partners were tapped to carry out the construction — PowerChina and Sinotech — with 8,000 education facilities to eventually be built.
Work has also begun on an airport in the southern city of Nasiriyah, built by the China State Construction Engineering Corp.
Under such projects, Chinese firms must work with local contractors that “provide manpower and raw materials,” Iraqi government spokesman Haider Majid.
Yesar al-Maleki, an analyst for the Middle East Economic Survey, said there was “a big question mark” over how the Iraqi contractors are selected.
“Many of these companies are rumored to be politically connected, and this is how they got the contracts,” he said.
Iraqi contractors could abuse the initiative for “useless projects,” he said, adding that Iraq could end up in a “death trap” of debt.
As China’s influence grows, more and more Iraqis have also been taking their business to China.
Banking on this, the Iraqi-Chinese Friendship Association in Baghdad has begun offering classes in Mandarin.
“When I returned to Iraq from China, I found that a lot of people wanted to learn the language,” 25-year-old teacher Sajjad al-Kazzaz said.
The majority of his students are businessmen, like Laith Ahmed, who imports electronics from China.
Ahmed cited challenges communicating with Chinese traders, “most of whom do not speak English,” but said that this had not stood in the way of business.
“Chinese products have flooded the Iraqi market,” Ahmed said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS