Selective Policy Transfer: Why GCC Reformers Borrow from China and Where It Breaks Down

As strategic competition between the United States and China intensifies, Western policymakers have become increasingly attentive to the deepening political, economic, and technological ties between China and the Middle East. For nearly a century, political elites in parts of the Middle East have pursued modernisation and reform agendas shaped, to varying degrees, by engagement with Western powers. By the mid-2020s, China has increasingly emerged as a reference point for some reform-minded actors in the Middle East.

Despite experiencing extensive Western and Japanese intervention during its semi-colonial period, China emerged as a formidable global power over the past 50 years. In the 1970s, while some Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Iran were showing signs of the adoption of Western culture, China’s GDP per capita only stood at US$156 and poverty was rampant.[i] While Iraq and Iran have faced prolonged challenges to sovereignty and stability in the decades that followed, China consolidated its position as a major global power –it is now armed with nuclear weapons and has a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. Furthermore, some analysts have forecast that Beijing could emerge a leading contender in a post-American hegemonic global order.

For GCC leaderships from Abu Dhabi to Riyadh and Doha, China’s development experience offers a powerful governance narrative that appears to combine rapid economic growth with limited political liberalisation. China’s emphasis on historical continuity and economic development rooted in cultural revival are, at times, rhetorically echoed in GCC state narratives. Rather than replicating a ‘Chinese model’ wholesale, GCC rulers have selectively engaged with Chinese practices, with a particular focus on economic exchanges and the adoption of technology.[ii] [iii]

State capacity, in this context, emphasises the ability of central authorities to coordinate policy implementation across bureaucratic institutions and manage administrative compliance. For example, the envisioned reforms laid down by Vision 2030 for Saudi Arabia are overseen by councils led by the Crown Prince. These include the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA), which plays a central role in coordinating economic policy and overseeing Vision 2030-related projects within Saudi Arabia’s 1.31 trillion SAR (~US$310 billion) national budget.[iv] [v] Similar to how the forthcoming Chinese 15th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development (2026-2030) continues to channel state capacity, plans in GCC countries also align government ministries, capital, and implementation timelines under one single executive vision.[vi]

In both China and several GCC states, leadership continuity has functioned as a facilitating condition for long-term planning. In both Oman and the UAE, Sultan Qaboos and Sheikh Zayed respectively spent decades overseeingthe impressive growth of their countries, elevating them from agrarian societies to modern nations.[vii] [viii] In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s relative youth suggests a potentially extended planning horizon too. In China, Deng Xiaoping played a decisive role in redirecting the country’s path for development, steering it away from Maoist central planning toward a more open socialist market economy, the so-called the “Chinese style” system of socialism.[ix]

In both GCC states and China, large-scale digital integration, which pool digital IDs, e-government services, smart cities, and financial regulation, has proceeded with comparatively limited public contestation. The UAE pass, Saudi 1Pass, and Qatar’s Metrash2 have significantly increased administrative efficiency, although a downside of consolidation of data in one place is that it exposes the state to increased cyber-security vulnerabilities.

Nevertheless, while Chinese bureaucratic practices have increasingly formalised performance evaluation beyond the traditional guanxi-based, relationship-driven performance metrics – relying more on institutionalised incentives to mobilise officials – informal relationships and loyalty remain more visibly embedded in GCC administrative systems, where incentive alignment continues to depend on wasta, or personal-network-based recommendations.[x] [xi]

In China, the state exerts extensive influence over capital through a combination of ownership stakes in major enterprises, direct control of state-owned enterprises, and large sovereign-linked investment institutions that mobilise capital in line with party priorities. By contrast, in GCC countries, capital flows are shaped by a more diverse set of actors, including sovereign wealth funds, prominent families, and institutional and foreign investors, and there is no single dominant party apparatus in economic decision-making.

Ultimately, governance tools are embedded in distinct institutional arrangements that shape how state authority is exercised. These arrangements are rarely transferable across contexts. In China, governance has evolved within a party-centric system that tightly integrates political authority, economic coordination, and planning. In GCC countries, governance rests on different institutional foundations, including oil-financed welfare systems, elite-led redistribution and state-society relations. As a result, China functions less as a blueprint than as a reference point for GCC rulers: while specific governance instruments can be selectively adapted, their effects are mediated by local political structures. It is at this point – where borrowed tools encounter existing institutions – that new governance configurations in the GCC begin to take shape.