China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF)

The China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF; Chinese: 中国-阿拉伯国家合作论坛) was inaugurated on 30 January 2004 in Cairo, when Chinese President Hu Jintao announced its creation during a visit to the Arab League headquarters and signed the founding declaration with Secretary-General Amr Moussa. The forum institutionalises relations between the People's Republic of China and the 22 member states of the League of Arab States, providing a standing framework for ministerial dialogue, sectoral cooperation, and strategic coordination. Its legal basis rests on the 2004 Declaration on the Establishment of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum and the accompanying Action Plan, supplemented by biennial action plans adopted at successive ministerial meetings. CASCF operates parallel to, but distinct from, China's bilateral comprehensive strategic partnerships with individual Arab states, and it functions under the policy umbrella articulated in China's 2016 Arab Policy Paper — the first such white paper Beijing issued for the region.

Procedurally, CASCF is structured around a Ministerial Conference convened every two years, alternating between China and an Arab capital, co-chaired by the Chinese foreign minister and a rotating Arab counterpart together with the Arab League Secretary-General. Between ministerials, a Senior Officials' Meeting (SOM) prepares the agenda, drafts the biennial action plan, and reviews implementation. Sub-forums and specialised mechanisms have proliferated since 2004, including the China-Arab Business Conference, the Energy Cooperation Conference, the Friendship Conference, the Press Cooperation Forum, the Think Tanks Forum, the Symposium on Relations between Civilizations, and the Inter-Bank Consortium. Each runs on its own cycle but reports back to the ministerial track. Working languages are Chinese and Arabic, with documentation produced bilingually.

The forum's substantive architecture rests on what Chinese diplomats describe as the "1+2+3" cooperation pattern, articulated by Xi Jinping at the sixth ministerial in Beijing in June 2014: energy cooperation as the core axis; infrastructure construction and trade-and-investment facilitation as the two wings; and three breakthrough areas comprising nuclear energy, aerospace satellites, and new energy. This formula was subsequently incorporated into the 2016 Arab Policy Paper and aligned with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to which all 22 Arab League members have now signed memoranda of understanding. CASCF action plans operationalise these priorities through scholarship quotas, training programmes for diplomats and journalists, joint laboratories, and currency-swap and yuan-clearing arrangements administered through the China-Arab Inter-Bank Consortium launched in 2018.

The tenth ministerial conference convened in Beijing on 30 May 2024, with Xi Jinping delivering the keynote address and the heads of state of Egypt, the UAE, Tunisia, and Bahrain in attendance — a notable upgrade from the foreign-minister level. The summit adopted the Beijing Declaration and the 2024-2026 Action Plan, and Xi pledged to build a "China-Arab community with a shared future" — a regional variant of his signature 人类命运共同体 (community of common destiny) concept. Earlier landmark gatherings include the inaugural Riyadh ministerial in 2004, the Beijing ministerial of 2014 that produced the 1+2+3 framework, the 2018 Beijing ministerial that elevated relations to a "strategic partnership of comprehensive cooperation and common development," and the first China-Arab States Summit held in Riyadh on 9 December 2022, which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hosted alongside the parallel China-GCC Summit.

CASCF should be distinguished from the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), with which it shares structural DNA but differs in scope: FOCAC engages African states individually, whereas CASCF works through the Arab League as a collective interlocutor, giving the League's Secretariat a coordinating role absent in the African analogue. It is also distinct from the China-GCC Strategic Dialogue, which covers only the six Gulf Cooperation Council members and concentrates on a long-pending free-trade agreement, and from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, in which several Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE) hold dialogue-partner status. Unlike the Arab League's own institutions, CASCF produces no binding instruments; its action plans are political commitments rather than treaties.

Controversies surrounding CASCF cluster around three issues. First, Beijing's positioning on the Palestinian question — CASCF declarations consistently endorse a two-state solution along 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as capital, language that hardened after the October 2023 Gaza war and was reinforced at the 2024 ministerial. Second, the forum's silence on the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, which Arab signatories have endorsed in joint statements at the UN Human Rights Council, drawing criticism from Western governments and rights organisations. Third, the role CASCF played in facilitating the March 2023 Beijing-brokered Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, which signalled an expanded Chinese security-political role in the region beyond the forum's original economic remit.

For the working practitioner, CASCF is the single most important institutional barometer of Sino-Arab alignment. Desk officers tracking energy markets, BRI project pipelines, or UN voting blocs should read each biennial action plan as a forward-looking checklist of deliverables. Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel in Arab capitals use CASCF sub-forums as low-cost channels for coordinating positions with Beijing outside the glare of bilateral summits. For analysts in Washington, Brussels, and Tel Aviv, CASCF documents — particularly the Beijing Declaration of 2024 — supply the textual baseline against which to measure Chinese encroachment on traditional Western prerogatives in the Middle East and North Africa.