Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Earlier this year, China penned a historic, 25-year agreement with Iran that will see the two countries cooperate on many fields, including trade, economics and transportation. This was closely aligned with a five-point initiative on achieving security and stability in the Middle East. The main takeaways of this initiative would focus on mutual respect and economic development. 

Despite having a deal with Saudi Arabia's  neighbor, Chinese President Xi Jinping on December 7, began an "epoch-making" trip to the Kingdom. Xi is expected to sign over 20 initiatives, including a strategic partnership agreement that will harmonize the Kingdom's Vision 2030 with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), valued at an astounding $29 billion. 

Each of these developments is significant – but taken together they are historic and highlight how successful China's win-win approach to diplomacy is. Beijing could sign these massive deals and maintain them despite long-simmering sectarian disagreements that have broken out into proxy conflicts. This demonstrates how China unites and how Washington divides. 

Meanwhile, there's a cooling of relations between Riyadh and Washington. The U.S. has made politically motivated and one-sided demands of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to sacrifice their own self-interest in order to ramp up Washington's proxy conflict against Russia via unilateral sanctions and other means. The Saudi side sees this as unacceptable and that's why they, along with other countries in the OPEC+ format, voted to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day in October despite protests from U.S. President Joe Biden.

Moreover, the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia has long been categorized by Washington's proclivity to exploit divisions in the region for its own political ends. Washington convinced Riyadh to join its regime change operation in Syria in 2011 on the basis of curtailing the perceived spread of Iranian influence in that country (and thus the region), and the U.S. side has used similar sectarian concerns to push back against Iran in the Middle East using Saudi Arabia as a staging point. 

But this has left the region worse off. The hot wars and proxy conflicts in the region initiated by Washington have led to untold deaths and destitution. Even countries not directly involved have had to bear the burden of hosting thousands, if not millions of refugees. Washington's usage of ethnic and sectarian divisions has disunited West Asia and made countries distrust each other, even if unity would otherwise be in their best interest to facilitate their development. 

Accordingly, Xi's Saudi visit, in the context of Wang Yi's tour to Iran and other Middle Eastern countries earlier last year and China's Middle East peace initiative is significant. It represents something new, where these countries that would do better by uniting and pooling their resources together can put aside their differences.

China's activities in the Middle East are shifting the winds to point in this direction, far more than Washington's influence has. Western countries have used divide-and-conquer tactics to carve up the Middle East (as well as most other regions in the world) for centuries – but China's leadership is a step in a new direction where, instead, these countries can align on one crucially important matter: Their own self-interests. 

China follows a strict non-interference policy with regard to the affairs of other countries and does not seek to make other countries follow its ideology. On the contrary, Western countries do the opposite. Western countries are acting hypocritical considering the deep contradictions that these countries have at home in the context of civil liberties, not even to speak of the crimes produced by their adventurism in the Middle East. 

It turns out that win-win cooperation happens to be the most viable form of diplomacy in the emerging multipolar world, since it is the most logical. Countries should pursue cooperation that fulfills their needs and of their development goals. That's demonstrated by China's dealings in the Middle East, including the latest developments that will emerge during President Xi's visit to Saudi Arabia.

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