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Mohamed Farid, member of the Egyptian Senate since 2020 who has a special interest in human rights, spoke to a July 17th Middle East Forum Webinar (video) about the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) influence in Egypt. The following is a summary of his comments:
China’s relationship with Egypt began in 1956 when it supported Cairo during the Suez Crisis, an international dispute over control of the Suez Canal referred to in the Arab world as the “Tripartite Aggression” by Israel, France, and the UK. The relationship continued to grow when the two nations joined the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM), a group of countries that served as a counterweight to the superpowers during the Cold War.
The PRC maintained contact throughout Cairo’s varied governments, signing a strategic partnership agreement in 2013 as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Additional agreements signed between the two in 2016 included a $15 billion investment by China focused primarily on infrastructure and construction. The $3 billion Iconic Tower in the New Administrative Capital of Egypt, completed in 2021, is among the projects realized by this investment. China’s initiative is aligned with Egypt’s President al-Sisi’s national agenda launched in 2016, Egypt Vision 2030. As U.S. investment in Egypt has declined by thirty-one percent between 2017 and 2022, China has surged to become Egypt’s second-largest trading partner and is responsible for approximately five percent of Egypt’s external debt.
In the cultural sphere, Chinese propaganda is spread through Egypt’s media, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses Egypt’s government-owned outlets as a “mouthpiece” to disseminate its propaganda in an effort to influence the Egyptian public. Activist groups that normally focus on human rights are uncharacteristically silent regarding the PRC’s human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims. With its portrayal of the Uyghurs as terrorists, China elicits sympathy from Egyptians. The Chinese ambassador to Egypt’s regular contributions of op-eds in Egypt’s newspapers shape favorable public opinion while “fostering oppositional attitudes” towards the West in general, and the U.S. in particular.
To engage with the next generation of Egypt’s governmental leaders, administrators, and executive leadership, China offers over a thousand training programs in a fields from healthcare to technology. The Egyptian Ministry of International Cooperation cooperates to enable Egyptians to earn advanced degrees from Chinese universities. China works with Egyptian political parties across the political spectrum through its Chinese embassy in Egypt, thereby “transcending ideological boundaries.” Culturally, a Confucius Institute, founded in Cairo University in 2007, teaches the Chinese language and culture. The director of the Cairo branch, one of five hundred worldwide, was recognized as the “best” among the institute’s global network of thirty-six hundred directors.
The two countries cooperate on space technology. Recently, a Chinese-financed satellite was tested in Egypt. The West is concerned about the rapidity of Chinese advancements in Egypt’s telecommunications sector now that the majority of Egypt’s routers are made in China. Egypt welcomes PRC companies with ties to the CCP even though they have been implicated in “global expansion of surveillance networks” and therefore pose a threat to privacy and security globally, including in the U.S.
Egypt’s media largely ignores the sensitive topic of China’s involvement in Egypt’s water resources. Specifically, the PRC is the lead in the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and built a $1.2 billion electrical power line from the dam to Ethiopian cities, giving it considerable leverage over any potential future water access disputes between the countries affected by the dam. Egypt and Ethiopia are in a dispute over the dam’s construction.
The Chinese Communist Party uses Egypt’s government-owned outlets as a “mouthpiece” to disseminate its propaganda in an effort to influence the Egyptian public.
Egypt’s over-reliance on China is clear through Chinese expansion over all aspects of Egyptian society and infrastructure. China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for Iran, and for countries that threaten world peace could pose a risk to regional stability as the PRC’s propaganda promotes negative views of the U.S. among the Egyptian public.
Although Egypt has tried to balance its relations with the world’s nations, there is a vestige of bitterness towards the U.S. from 2012 – 2013 when the Obama Administration supported former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government. After the 2013 revolution ousted Morsi and President Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi came to power, Democratic administrations under both Obama and now Biden have given Egypt the “cold shoulder,” contributing to Egypt’s reluctance to rely on the U.S. – a reluctance illustrated by Egypt’s decision, after decades of negotiations with the U.S., to build a nuclear plant financed by Russia.
The official narrative is that Egypt and the U.S. remain friends and allies, but in trade and investment, the share allotted to Egypt by the G7 in its Global Partnership for Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) initiative is dwarfed by China’s engagement of and investment in Egypt. In its bid to become the new global superpower, China took the initiative to fill the vacuum formed by the U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East. Nevertheless, Farid strongly believes that “countries like Egypt and the United States ... have to work together to ensure that our shared values and priorities ... are protected [to] maintain peace and stability in the region.”
