President Xi Jinping of China Is All Business in Middle East Visit

President Xi Jinping of China with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on a visit to Riyadh on Jan. 19

BEIJING — When President Xi Jinping of China traveled to the Middle East this month he dropped in on two regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and Iran, a feat few global leaders could pull off.

The Saudis had just executed a Shiite cleric, and angry Iranians had stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in response, a tinderbox moment that Mr. Xi ignored by sticking to his mission that was all about building business and staying above the fray.

The timing of Mr. Xi’s tour, his first visit to the region after three years of assiduous travel to almost every other corner of the world, proved to be serendipitous. He had canceled a trip last year because of the war between Saudi Arabia and Houthi rebels in Yemen, and his new date coincided with the lifting of international sanctions against Iran.

The risk of arriving in the middle of a huge dispute between the Saudis and Iranians paid off, delivering what Mr. Xi no doubt considered an important prize as he tries to extend China’s prestige abroad.

He became the first world leader in Iran after the completion of the deal on Iran’s nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia worked on together with China’s support. Arriving so soon after the lifting of sanctions provided an optimum moment for China to set the stage for its future deal making.

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Mr. Xi met with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran four days later in Tehran. Credit Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press

China’s deep economic interests in the Middle East carry little of the historical overlay of the empire building and alliance shaping of the European powers. France colonized Syria, the British carved out Saudi Arabia, the United States meddled in Iran in the 1950s, and Washington and Tehran became implacable enemies after the Islamic revolution of 1979. China, weak and minding its own affairs at home, was absent at all those milestones.

That is not to say China always refrained from taking sides. China was a major supplier of arms to Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war when the United States and Europe imposed an arms embargo. That military relationship is likely to be revived when a more recent arms embargo on Iran is eased, though that is not likely any time soon.

But for the moment, China is concentrating on buying and selling in the Middle East, and playing Riyadh and Tehran off each other for better oil deals, leaving the strenuous diplomacy to the United States.

China is wary of the Islamic State, but is not hugely motivated to enter the Syrian conflict. “The Middle East is the graveyard of great powers,” said Li Shaoxian, a former vice-president at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a government research institute. “China doesn’t really care who takes the presidency in Syria in the future — as long as that person could stabilize and develop the country, we would agree.”

Mr. Xi began his trip in Saudi Arabia, China’s biggest oil supplier, which is looking to recoup its diminished oil sales to the United States with increased supplies to China, an objective that may be hard to achieve given China’s economic slowdown. With King Salman, Mr. Xi visited the Yasref oil refinery, China’s largest investment project in Saudi Arabia, a joint effort between Sinopec, the Chinese state-owned energy giant, and Saudi Aramco.

In Cairo, Mr. Xi met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the military strongman whose rule signifies the definitive end of the Arab Spring uprising that the Chinese government was so afraid might infect its own people. There he splashed around $1 billion in financing for Egypt’s central bank and a $700 million loan to the state-owned National Bank of Egypt.

At the Arab League, a traditional platform for American leaders, Mr. Xi promised to be different from the other big powers. China would not seek proxies or spheres of influence in the Middle East, he said in a speech filled with loans of eye-popping sizes to Arab countries.

Iran was the most intriguing stop. Mr. Xi’s arrival was preceded with a glowing article in the Iranian press about the legendary Silk Road that flourished during the Tang dynasty. And he extended an invitation to Iran to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security group.

Under the sanctions regime imposed on Iranian oil by the United States, China was “pretty good” in terms of compliance, said Edward Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Now China wants to be first in line for consideration as Iran’s oil and gas sector opens up, he said.

Iran, however, wants to balance new investments between the West and Asia, and during a visit to Europe last week, a spending spree by President Hassan Rouhani included huge purchases from Total, Peugeot Citroën and Airbus.

Access to Iran’s market may not be automatic for another reason. Iranian businessmen have grumbled that the Chinese muscled out domestic industry during the sanctions, and flooded the country with cheap goods.

In the longer term, the Chinese could do well in military sales, said Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The roots of the economic relationship between China and Iran are in fact in the military arena,” Ms. Maloney said.

The Chinese-manufactured J-10 fighter jet has long been seen as a likely weapon for Iran, a possibility that Israel has objected to. But China cannot sell the J-10 without a green light from Washington until 2020, and the likelihood of China flouting the arms embargo “was highly improbable at best,” Ms. Maloney said.

The Israelis should not worry, said Yin Gang, a research analyst at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who has written books on China’s relationships with the Middle East.

Iran is sure to purchase fighter jets from Europe, Russia or China, and “it would pose the smallest threat to Israel and Arabic countries if they buy the Chinese jet, which is inferior in performance,” he said.

There was little risk, Mr. Yin added, that China would become actively involved in the fight against the Islamic State. China might provide some economic help on the antiterrorism front but a military contribution was out of the question. “We simply have no such military might,” he said. “How could China send soldiers there? It would be like sending new corpses.”