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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-schenker-china-mideast-20101116,0,3988489.story
China's Rise in the Middle East
(Los Angeles Times) David Schenker and Christina Lin - The Middle Kingdom is planting deep roots in the Middle East these days. China gets more than a quarter of its oil imports from the Persian Gulf and has billions invested in Iran's oil sector. Starting in the 1990s, China filled a void in Syria left by a decaying Soviet Union, providing the terrorist state with a variety of missiles. The most recent manifestation was the unprecedented inclusion in October of Chinese warplanes in the Turkish military exercise Anatolian Eagle, maneuvers that previously had included the U.S. and Israel. David Schenker is director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Christina Lin is a visiting fellow at the institute.