Regional international integrations boomed since the end of WWII. Regional cooperation become tides of the times be it NAFTA after the American-styled imperial management model, EU after the European-styled united-state management model, or the MERCOSUR, APEC, ASEAN and SCO that took the form of informal mechanisms. By contrast, the Middle East region is the only exception given the reason of historical, cultural, religious, ethnic and sectarian conflicts. Whether the Middle East is a geographic concept, a political concept, or a cultural concept remains a dispute in academics. This essay largely regards it as a geographic concept including Western Asians, North Africans and Eastern Africans. In contrast to other regions, the Middle Eastern international relations is more uncertain and volatile, and with outstanding, traditional and non-traditional issues like territorial disputes, ethnic feuds, religious contradictions, terrorism and WMD proliferation, etc. Since the end of WWII, sovereign states and international organizations like U.S., EU, Russia (USSR), China, League of Arab States, African Union, and UN have engaged in the settlement of the Middle East hot-spot issues, and expanded their political influence through political mediation and participation in the regional governance of the Middle East. For example, Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East in the wake of the fourth Middle East war in 1973 ended up with U.S. gaining the upper hand in the U.S.-Soviet games. Thus, mediation diplomacy is an important means for international actors to lift their hard- as well as soft-power.

I. Raise of the Issue
With China’s international status growing continuously and its overseas interests expanding, the Middle East region is increasingly becoming China’s “big periphery”, and participation in addressing the Middle East hot-spot issues is an important means for China to protect national interest and assume international responsibility. The Middle East is even more important to China in strategic terms--it is a fulcrum on which China cooperates and competes with other big powers, directly relevant to China’s post-cold war strategic opportunity period.[①] This essay argues that China in fact has obtained two strategic opportunity periods between the end of cold war in 1991 and the dramatic change in the Middle East in 2011. The two periods, about a decade long for each, were invariably started and ended with important clashes between the West and Islamic countries in the Middle East. China’s rapid, economic and social development in the last two decades in the end of cold war was precisely accredited to the grab of the two strategic opportunity periods.[②]
Since 2011, multi-polarization has further developed as the West declined, the newly emerging powers rose and regional middle and small countries united for self-entrenchment. Following the dramatic change in the Middle East, the long-pressed, anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. forces would play an important role in domestic politics of the Middle Eastern Islamic countries. The Iran’s nuclear issue and the dramatic change in the Middle East will prevent the United States again from re-pivoting to Asia-Pacific handily, which bestows China a third strategic opportunity period. China has to actively intervene into the Middle East affairs through political mediation as one of the important instruments before China can participate in addressing hot-spot issues in the Middle East, enhance China’s political voice in the region and veer the hot-spot issues to the direction in favor of the national interest of China. There are two outstanding issues yet to be discussed academically about China’s mediation actions in the Middle East in the new period, which began with the event that China sent its first special envoy to the Middle East.
1. What is the motivation of the intervention? Is it driven by interest or by international responsibility? Is the intervention relevant to the expectation and concerns of the international community to some extent? To what extent is China’s mediation impacted by China’s limitation to understand the difficulty of addressing the Middle East issues?
2.Why China intervenes in various hot-spot issues in the Middle East to various extents ? As is known to all, the Middle East issues can break down into two categories: the traditional issues such as Palestine-Israel issue, Western-Sahara issue, Cyprus issue, Iran nuclear issue, and the non-traditional issues like Somali pirates, Bahrain internal conflict; or into three categories of internal issues such as political contradiction in Yemen, regional issues like contradictions among the Middle East countries, such as Palestine-Israel issue and Western-Sahara issue, and trans-regional issues like contradictions between the Middle East and extra-Middle East countries, such as U.S.-Iran contradiction around the Iran’s nuclear issue. As those issues are different in their positions in China’s diplomacy, and in which China puts in diplomatic resources to different extents and China intervened with different approaches and goals. Why? These are the two questions yet to be discussed exclusively.
II. Literature Review
Mediations are ubiquitous in social, business, ethnic, political and interstate relations, concerning psychology, sociology, economics, management, law, diplomacy, ethnology and political science, a trans-disciplinary subject.[③] Mediation refers to invention into conflict by a third party with non-coercive and neutral ways and with peaceful management and behavior to address the conflict, whose direct outcome is to transform the bilateral relations into trilateral relations.[④] Since the 20th century, mediation as an obligation in settling disputes were carried in multilateral and bilateral treaties, such as Hague Convention for the Peaceful Settlement of Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes in 1907, and American Treaty of Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes in 1948.[⑤] Although, mediation is an archaic diplomatic act, international researches on the subject are few, which can break down into the following four categories.
Category one examines the concept and theory of mediation. The research results of this category mainly include works and essays of Western scholars discussing definitions, categories, motivations, mechanisms and performance and using qualitative and quantitative methods that enshrine Western theories and practices of mediation.[⑥]
Category two mainly examines mediation cases of national and international organizations including the United States, Israel, Qatar, the United Nations, that usually using historical approaches and case studies.[⑦]
Category three examines mediation in respect of diplomacy and negotiation, believing that mediation is an instrument of crisis management and conflict prevention with the intervention of a third party.[⑧]
Category fourth mainly examines China’s Middle East diplomacy in the new period, e.g., the special envoy mechanism explored by Liu Zhongmin of Shanghai International Studies University and the 6-party talks of Korean nuclear issue, discussed by Zhu Feng of the Institute of International Relations, Beijing University.[⑨]
In general, academic research on mediation today are evolved in three tiers. The first is the tier of mediation diplomatics including basic theories of crisis management, conflict settlement and preventive defense; the second is the tier of big-power and regional countries’ mediation on the Middle East issues including comparative studies on mediations conducted by UN, Arab League, African Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council, U.S., Russia, EU, Japan, Qatar, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc. The third is the tier of China’s the Middle East diplomacy in terms of instrument, target, mechanism, resources (including bilateral and multilateral mediations). Those research outcomes feature pluralism of subjects, creativeness of approaches and novelty of dimensions, though with obvious weaknesses.
1. In theoretical terms, they were more concerned with the performance of mediation by focusing on whether multilateralism is more efficient than unilateralism and whether symmetry powers work better than asymmetry powers in the third-party mediation, while they overlooked the analysis on the motivation of the neutral, third party.
2. They elaborate on the mediations conducted by Western countries, Qatar, Algeria, UN, Arab League, African Union and international organizations at the expense of Chinese mediations, especially those conducted in the Middle East in recent years. This essay therefore tries to make up for the weaknesses by examining the motivation and model of China’s the Middle East diplomatic mediation.
III. Core Concept: “Mediation Diplomacy” in Terms of Diplomacy Categorization
The term “mediation diplomacy” in this essay refers to “behavior of a neutral, third party assumed by sovereign state or international organization that offers to intervene in conflict via non-coercive means and managing crisis and settling conflict by peaceful means”. The mediation diplomacy as a special diplomacy category should be available with the following elements: a. the player should be a diplomatic actor, i.e., sovereignty state, international organization and its representative, but not the civil mediators addressing family, enterprise and social disputes. b. the mediator should be willing to settle crisis and contradiction. c. the mediator offers to intervene in conflict and, by building trust with conflicting parties, comes up with trade-off alternative rather than coercive means. d. the mediator tries to use peaceful means rather than violent means to manage and solve conflict, though short of humanitarian intervention. As shown in Fig.1, mediation diplomacy turns adversary, two-party zero-sum game into three-party win-win cooperation in conflict management, i.e., turning bilateralism into trilateralism, turning conflict into cooperation, turning security competition into political compromise and turning international politics into state-interstate political interaction.
Mediation diplomacy is different from diplomatic mediation in that the former is a kind of diplomacy while the latter is a peace-making behavior, a diplomatic activity. Cases of mediation diplomacy abound in international relations. Statistically, between 1945 and 1874, there were 310 cases of large-scale international conflicts erupted in the world, of which 82% were followed up with mediation suggestions raised by third parties. Kal Holsti’s research shows that the third-party mediation offers accounted for 45% of the 94 cases of post-war, interstate conflicts.[⑩] In whatever percentage of 82% or 45%, mediation diplomacies are common. Common though, they extremely vary in performance. For examples, in the wake of the China-India border conflict, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and other five Asian and African countries forwarded mediation option but failed at last; upon the eruption of the fourth Middle East war in 1973 when Israel encircled Egyptian’s third army, Kissinger took on the mediation diplomacy to have unprecedentedly brought the two countries to the table and ended up with peace of the two countries.[11]
On the one hand, mediation diplomacy must be supported by powerful actors. On the other, smaller powers would take advantage of their special relations with the conflicting parties to reach multiplied result. For example, when the United States and Iran were imminent in shooting each other following Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, Algeria stepped in to have weathered the storm, which positively improved the image of Algeria.[12]
Mediation diplomacy in China has a long history dated back to ancient times. Especially in the Spring and Autumn Period, strategists and thinkers frequently mediated among vassal states. Mediation diplomacy of the Chinese government in modern times is as much active. For example, in April 15, 1885, the British Asia-fleet abruptly occupied Geomundo island of Korea, controlling the channel through which the Russian’s Far-east fleet getting into Yellow Sea from Sea of Japan. As a suzerain state, Qing-dynasty government played off the contradiction of Britain and Russia on the ground of protecting the suzerainty of Korea, which resulted in the relaxation of the dispute and Russia’s commitment not to occupy Korean territory and British withdrawal from the island, a victory for China’s mediation diplomacy for the time-being.[13] Since August 2003, China has staged the six-party talk mechanism on Korean nuke issue which further exhibited China’s vibrant mediation diplomacy.[14] In the Middle East, China participated in peaceful solution of the Sudan issue, Iran’s nuclear issue, Palestine-Israel peace process, Libya crisis and Syria crisis, which also highlighted Chinese-styled mediation diplomacy.
IV. Theoretical Hypotheses: The Impacts on China’s the Middle East Mediation
China’s mediation diplomacy in the Middle East in the new period was necessary. 1. The Middle East region as a whole is endowed with vast natural resources though acute with territorial, ethnic and sectarian contradictions. Countries in the region are facing three challenges, namely, social transition at home, configuration transition of the region, and transition of international system. Various crises, contradictions and conflicts break out uninterruptedly. Therefore, China as a permanent member of the UN Security Council assumes a distinctive responsibility. 2. As China constantly pursues a peaceful, neutral and non-alignment policy, never forges strategic alliance with any country in the region and keeps friendship relations with all parties in the region, China can become a fair and just mediator on the conflicts.[15] 3. As none of U.S., EU, Japan, Russia and India, be them traditional or emerging powers, is capable of orbiting the Middle East region into their respective “backyard” or “sphere of influence”, China’s mediation diplomacy will not only help to push for the regional governance, but also help to construct new-type big-power cooperation. 4. One year on since the Arab revolt, the Arab countries have widely pursued a balancing strategy between big powers, and welcomed the rising China to participate in the settlement of the Middle East issues, which provided Chinese mediation with a good external condition.[16] 5. China has accumulated experience of mediation diplomacy on settling the issues of Darfur, Palestine-Israel peace process, Iran’s nuke, domestic conflicts in Libyan and Syria respectively, which laid down the foundation for forming the theory and practice of the mediation diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.
Chinese mediation diplomacy in the Middle East started with setting up the special envoy mechanism on Palestine-Israel issue in Sept. 2002. Over a decade of development, China’s mediation diplomacy in the Middle East started from scratch, probed in practice, and opened a new path. The realms of the mediation diplomacy expanded continuously, which included Palestine-Israel issue, Sudan issue, Iran’s nuke issue, Somali issue, domestic conflicts in Libya and Syria, etc. Take the special envoy mechanism as an example, China has established a special envoy for each of Korean nuclear issue, Sudan issue, and Palestine-Israel issue, of which two were dealing with the Middle East issues, an evidence that the Middle East has become an important arena on which China stages bilateral and multilateral relations with other powers and participates in the Middle East governance. Over the last decade, China’s mediation in the Middle East has matured, showing firm stance on principles and flexibility on policy instrument and intervening deeper on some issues (e.g., Sudan issue and Iran’s nuke issue) than on other issues (e.g., Cyprus issue and Yemen issue). What are the reasons behind the differentiation? This essay identifies four motivations: relevance of interest, impact of power, international concern and intractability of the crisis settlement. All the four have determined the depth of China’s mediation.
A.  Relevance of interest
Hypothesis one, the more the Middle East hot-spot issue associates with Chinese realistic interest, the more likely China involves in the mediation.
Generally speaking, that a third party comes to mediation is largely up to the reckoning of its own interest.[17] In the new period, Chinese interest in the Middle East exist in four aspects: first, normal supply of energies, stable price of energies, and growing business interest; second, keeping balance of power in the region that prevents any regional and external powers from monopolizing the Middle East affairs and seeking hegemony over the region; third, preventing the region from appearance of anti-China government and impairing otherwise good relations with China; four, keeping peace and stability in the region and prevent the region from political turmoil.
The first of the above four interests is the realistic interest of China, which is more immediate and tangible. When this interest is at stake, China will more likely put in diplomatic resource and launch mediation diplomacy. For example, upon the outbreak of Iran’s nuke crisis, China proactively participated in the “5 1” talks, and actively pushed for the peaceful settlement of the issue. An important reason is: Iran’s oil relates to the lifeline of China’s national economy and Iran is an important trade partner of China with huge cooperation potentiality, including cooperation projects in energy, infrastructure construction and trade. By contrast, China has little realistic interest in west Sahara, hence with limited input of diplomatic resource, though China participates in the UN peace-keeping action in west Sahara, but not mediation diplomacy yet.
B.   Influence of power
Hypothesis two: the stronger China can exert its influence on hot-spot issues in the Middle East, the more likely China will engage in mediation diplomacy. Mediation diplomacy is as much related to the capability of the mediator as related to his will. The neutral, third party will more likely to conduct mediation diplomacy if he is capable, and have the resources available, to pressure and influence the conflicting parties and their behaviors.[18] For example, that president Carter succeeded in persuading Egypt and Israel to the David Camp negotiation with baits of economic aid and security guarantee is mainly attributed to the fact that the United States is the only power that can do so.[19]
Likely, China maintains constructive cooperation relations with all conflicting parties of Sudan, a large influence over southern and northern Sudan, which will only further intensify along with arms sale, economic aid and trade cooperation. Cao Gangchuan met with his counterpart, Chief of Joint Staff of Sudanese armed forces Haj Ahmed El Gaili in April 2007 to issued a joint statement by reiterating bilateral cooperation relations in all fields. [20]Upon the tensions broke out in southern and northern Sudan, Chinese president visited Sudan and sent special envoy Liu Gui to the mediation between the southern and northern Sudan. They finally separated peacefully in 2011 thanks to the active mediation of China. By contrast, Chinese influence is too limited on the southern and northern Cyprus for China to wage mediation diplomacy on the Cyprus issue.
C.   International attention
Hypothesis three: the higher the international concerns is over the hot-spot issues in the Middle East, the more likely China will come to the mediation diplomacy.
China’s decision to mediate in the Middle East is not only out of realistic interest, but also out of international responsibility. Over recent years, along with the rise of China’s comprehensive national strengths, comes higher international expectation. China is expected to assume international responsibility, to provide public goods, and to maintain international law and order. As a permanent member of Security Council and a large developing country, China is responsible for maintaining stability in the Middle East region, to strengthen crisis management in the region and to promote conflict settlement in the region. No hot-spot issues in the Middle East other than the issue of Palestine-Israel can pull the nerve of the whole world and become the barometer of the Middle Eastern political ecology. Being well aware of the high international attention to the Palestine-Israel issue and the overall situation of the Middle East is at stake to the issue, China decided to send special envoy to the issue since 2002, actively conducting mediation diplomacy between the Arabs and Israelis, which has vigorously pushed for the Palestine-Israel peace process. Undoubtedly, Chinese realistic interest is so limited on the issue that its mediation diplomacy is more of a response to the international responsibility than an account of realistic interest. By contrast, since the international attention is low over the territorial dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and the issue has been under control, China has not yet come to the mediation.
D.   Intractability of the crisis settlement
Hypothesis four: the easier the hot-spot issue in the Middle East can be settled, China is more likely to involve in the mediation diplomacy.
For the past ten years, the degree of China’s enthusiasm in settling hot-spot issues in the Middle East was conversely proportionate to China’s assessment of the difficulties of the settlement. Generally speaking, China would less likely put in diplomatic resources and come to mediation if the issue concerned is hard to be solved, and vice versa. For example, in the wake of the outbreak of Sudan crisis, the central government in Khartoum agreed to hold referendum on southern Sudan’s independence, which greatly increased the chances for the success of China’s mediation diplomacy effort and therefore allowed special envoy Liu Guijin to conduct frequent mediation diplomacy. By contrast, China did not participate in the mediation between Iran and United Arab Emirates on island’s issues, nor in mediation between various armed forces of Somalia, mainly because the two crises were intractable and the conflicting parties are unlikely to reach compromise in short term, for which China did not want to run too much diplomatic risk.
The following section will analyze some real cases to test the above four hypotheses.
V. Empirical Analysis: Four Categories of China’s Mediation Diplomacy in the Middle East
The Middle East is a region of the most salient hot-spot issues in the world and becoming the priority and conundrum of global governance, which include Arab-Israeli peace process issue, territorial disputes of Mid-Eastern countries, WMD proliferation in the region, ethnic and sectarian conflict issues, etc. The dramatic change in the Middle East broke out in the late 2010 has made social, sectarian and ethnic contradictions even worse. Domestic hot-spots in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain emerged from the surface of water to become new host-spot issues in the Middle East. Therefore, U.S., EU, Russia, the UN, League of Arab States, African Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and other powers, international organizations and the Middle Eastern countries thronged to the mediation diplomacy, which maintained stability of the region, preventing hot-spot issues from upgrading, enhancing their international influence and enabling the Middle East issues become an important arena of big-power relations.[21]
Table 1 demonstrates that an important means with which the big powers use to participate in the Middle Eastern governance is mediation diplomacy whose subjects comprise not only world powers and international organizations, but also the Middle East countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.[22] Table 1 also shows that China did participate in the settlement of hot-spot issues in the Middle East though to different degrees and China’s mediation diplomacy is selective. China’s mediation diplomacy in the Middle East break down into four tiers: deep intervention, proactive participation, limited mediation and generally detached.
A.   Deep intervention
The term deep intervention refers to China’s huge put-in of diplomatic resources including sending special envoy and tackling hot-spot issues. China’s realistic interest are directly related to the hot-spot issues; China maintains good relations with conflicting parties; the international community pins high hope on the settlement of hot-spot issues; and hot-spot issues are strongly controllable. In the process of those mediations, Chinese government paid high attention, top leaders including president, premier and ministers often directly participated in the mediations and designed negotiation proceedings for the sake of allowing disputed parties be able to reach compromise in a short time, or at least preventing crises from upgrading. 
In the crisis management, China often approaches with aids and pressure. On the one hand, China provided all parties with necessary economic aids, skewed trade policy, tariff reduction on import commodities, invited leader of all parties to visit China and provide military aid and military training projects in order to reach agreement between conflicting parties. On the other hand, China would leverage cutting economic aids and limiting high-level exchanges as to pressure all parties in order to reach effect of negotiation in a short time. For example, SINOPEC gained profit in Sudan totaled $25.8 billion or net profit of $14.69 billion to compare with GDP of Sudan worth $38 billion of the same year.[23] China and Sudan are like a commonwealth of interest, which is the practical foundation of China’s mediation diplomacy. China’s combination policy of aids and pressure, its offer of solutions and its mediation diplomacy for the sake of peaceful separation of the two parties have prevented them from large-scale military conflicts. China also actively mediated on the Darfur issue and raised constructive proposals that contributed wisdom to the peace and stability of Darfur region. In February 2007, President Hu Jintao visited Sudan, talked with President Bashir, and met with First Vice President Mayardit and Vice President Ali Taha.[24]
In May 2007, China set up the special envoy mechanism on Darfur issue and Ambassador Liu Guijin visited southern Sudan, other African Countries, Europe and U.S. for many times, actively communicated with UN, African Union, League of Arab Countries and EU, and took advantage of China’s assumption of the rotating president of the Security Council to push for the 1769 resolution that resulted in reaching the agreement of UN, African Union, and Sudan government on AU-UN "hybrid operation" and sent a 315 troops of multidimensional operation force.[25] China’s mediation in Sudan is of the category of deep intervention.
B.  Proactive participation
Proactive participation refers to China’s put-in of a great deal of diplomatic resources, which includes sending special envoy to participate in the settlement of hot-spot issues and usually with the participation of Chinese national leaders in the mediation. In contrast to the category of deep intervention, in proactive participation China usually does not direct the rhythm of negotiations, nor sets agenda and provides economic aids and political pressure to impact negotiation. China is pleased to see the solution of hot-spot issues, though it declines to put in diplomatic resources to speed up the process of negotiation, nor expects to see outcomes of negotiations in a short time. For examples, China’s special envoy has been conducted shuttle diplomacy for years. Wang Shijie, Sun Bigan and Wu Sike, former and incumbent special envoys, often shuttled between Pakistan, Israel, Egypt and Jordan for promoting peace and negotiation. China also actively participated in “5 1” mechanism to urge dialogue and negotiation on Iran’s nuke issue and sought solution through multilateral mechanisms under UN mandate. For example, on April 18, 2006, the vice foreign ministers of 6 countries held close-door meeting in Moscow; on June 1 the same year, the meeting was held in Vienna and reached agreement to launch a new program for settling Iran’s nuclear issue; on April 16, 2008, directors of foreign ministers of six countries and Director General for External Relations of the Council of European Union held meeting in Shanghai in discussing program of resuming negotiation on Iran’s nuclear issue; and in April 2012, the meeting of “5 1” was held in Istanbul, Turkey, on which China proposed again to address Iran’s nuclear issue through diplomatic means within the UN framework.[26] As did on Palestine-Israel issue, China proactively participated in the mediation, though China did not seek in dominating agenda-setting nor proposed programs.
C.  Limited mediation
Limited mediation refers to the category of the mediation that China puts in little diplomatic resources, either participating in mediation for the time being, or does it on a modest level. Generally speaking, those hot-spot issues are little related to China’s realistic interest; the conflicting parties in concern are limited to Chinese influence; the international attention is low; or no peaceful solution is available in the short term. In those cases, Chinese special envoys, if any, will be sent temporarily and symbolically. For example, when Syrian crisis deteriorated in 2012, Syrian opposition parties were invited to Beijing on February 9. In February 17, Chinese special envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun and his 5 people entourage arrived in Damascus for a visit of two days. Zhai Jun met Syrian leaders and political parties in order to make “some contribution to” and “play a constructive role in” addressing the Syrian issue.[27] In the category of limited mediation, China’s top leaders seldom participate in mediations in person. They instead send officials of Chinese Embassies or lower officials to the mediations, or invite conflicting parties to China. For example, on June 21-22, 2011, Mahmoud Jibril, head of the executive committee of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) visited Beijing and China launched limited mediation diplomacy between Kadafi government and NTC.[28] In this kind of mediation, China expounds its position and principle of negotiation rather than lays down timetable and venue.
D. Generally detached
The “generally detached” mediation can be viewed as “indirect mediation”, which means that China would take part not proactively, but indirectly in crisis management conducted by international organizations like UN. Those hot-spot issues are less related to China’s realistic interest; China and conflicting parties have little to speak of strategic confidence; China can do little to influence the parties; the international community, especially big powers, pay little attention to the issues; or they are long-term hot-spot issues that cannot be solved in the short term. For example, China did not participate proactively in the mediation on issues of Lebanon, Somali, Yemen, Bahrain, western Sahara, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, but instead played a indirect role via UN. This is a generally detached category of mediation diplomacy.
VI. Conclusion
As China further grows in its comprehensive national strength, the Middle East becomes an important part of China’s “bigger-periphery” diplomacy and thus an important strategic bolster of China’s peaceful rise. China’s mediation in the Middle East is an important part of China’s omnidirectional diplomacy, which is positively significant to enhance China’s protection of its overseas interest, its image of a responsible power, its soft power, and its coordination with other powers.
China’s mediation in the Middle East covers hot-spot issues with following features: first, mediation among different parties and ethnicities of sovereign states, such as Darfur issue, Libyan issue and Syrian issue. It should not be ruled out that China will involve in addressing the internal conflicts of Lebanon, Yemen and Somali under the framework of multilateral organizations. Second, China launches mediation diplomacy among the Middle East countries to address their territorial and resource disputes between Israel and Palestine, and between Iran and United Arab Emirates. Third, China mediates between extra-regional powers and the Middle East countries on issues like Iran’s nuclear issue. To this research, therefore, China’s mediation diplomacies in the Middle East are mainly determined by four factors: relevance of interest, impact of power, international attention and intractability of the crisis settlement, which conversely determines the form of China’s mediation diplomacies that turns out to be four: deep intervention, proactive participation, limited mediation and generally detached.
As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has every reason to play a more positive role in addressing the Middle East issues. Moreover, China’s mediation diplomacy plays a role of bridge among conflicting parties of the Middle East. China is different from U.S., Europe and Russia. China never colonized in the Middle East, nor left “historic burden” in the region. In addition, Chinese culture is peaceful and reconciliatory, and “Chinese doctrine of mean” emphasizes eclecticism, unbiased, detached and non-interference in domestic politics of other countries. China will only put forward constructive resolutions, sometimes individually and sometimes in concert.[31] Chinese diplomats are more patient than their Western counterparts and usually take conviction and persuasion rather than pressure and coercion, helpful for reaching agreement. China’s mediation diplomacy in the Middle East is increasingly sophisticated, and will be very likely to become a public good that China provides the international community with and enhance the image of a responsible power of China and its soft-power construction.
Those being said above, China’s mediation diplomacy has its downsides. First, the Middle East is low in its position in China’s general diplomatic vision at least to date. It is not even behind world powers and periphery countries, but also behind Africa and Latin America in China’s diplomatic prioritization. Thus, the diplomatic resources that China puts in the Middle East diplomacy is severely insufficient and the unique role of the Middle East in extending China’s strategic opportunity period is prevented from being viewed from a strategic high. Second, some in Chinese academics and politics believe that the Middle East hot-spot issues are so complicated and intractable that they waste diplomatic resources and mediation diplomacy. But they actually overlook the issues to stand as a new field for big-power strategic cooperation and for U.S., EU, Russia, China and groups of powers to build up a more stable cooperation relationship.[32]
Third, China lacks a powerful pool of talent and reserve of knowledge to support its mediation diplomacy in the Middle East. Only by mastering the Middle East languages, Islamic history, culture, national conditions and political system, can diplomats in the mediation enhance their own personal attraction and strategic communication ability, and enable Chinese option acceptable to all parties. In sum, China’s mediation diplomacy in the Middle East started from scratch, deepening gradually, to enhance China’s international influence, moral attraction, cultural affinity, and also consolidate the diplomatic theory and practice with Chinese characteristics.

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