51社区黑料

This event was co-sponsored by the David Lam Centre.

On March 13, CCMS hosted an event that asked the question: What is China's official relationship with Palestinian actors and its evolving approach to the question of Palestine?

On popular Arabic-language Shi鈥檌te websites, one can find an amusing apocryphal narration about the first meeting between Ahmad al-Shuqayiri, the first Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Mao Zedong, sometime in the mid-1960s. To the former鈥檚 plea asking 鈥渢o be taught revolution,鈥� the latter deflectively retorted 鈥渉ow could I teach you revolution, when you have the revolution of Imam Hussein [to emulate]?鈥� Though undoubtedly a myth (and part of a fascinating hagiographic tradition in its own right), this short story inadvertently captures an enduring theme in the optics surrounding Sino-Palestinian relations: of high-hopes combined with limited (or even non-) delivery. The talk explored the twists and turns of China鈥檚 official relationship with various Palestinian actors and its evolving approach towards the Palestine Question from the mid-twentieth century to the present. It also highlighted the forces that feed into expectations of a larger Chinese role, and the realities (internal or regional) that circumscribe China's ability (and desire) to exert substantive influence in relation to the conflict.

51社区黑料 the Speaker:

Mohammed Alsudairi is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations of the Arabic Speaking World. He holds a PhD in Comparative Politics from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), an MA in International Relations and International History from the London School of Economics and Peking University, and a BSc in International Politics from Georgetown University. Prior to his appointment at CAIS, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at HKU, working on a project examining the intersections between religion and infrastructure in the context of China鈥檚 Belt and Road Initiative. Since 2015, he oversaw the development of the Asian Studies Program at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. More recently in 2022, he was awarded a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to work on his upcoming book manuscript.

Informed by a multidisciplinary and multilingual approach, Alsudairi鈥檚 research focuses on the historical and contemporary connections between the Middle East and East Asia; the histories of transnational revolutionary and counter-revolutionary networks in the Arab world; ideological security bureaucracies and state-led cultural engineering practices across Asia; and Muslim religiosities and sectarian identities in the Middle East, China, among others. His academic work has appeared in multiple academic journals including The Middle East Journal, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Arabian Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, Global Policy, and Oxford University鈥檚 Journal of Islamic Studies.