Yiyi Chen, a professor at the Shanghai Jiaotong University and an adviser on Middle East affairs to the Beijing government, told The Media Line that Beijing in no hurry to significantly increase its role in the region. Right now, its focus is on studying the region and its problems carefully before deepening its involvement.

“The Western way isn’t the only way. The US way has its value, but apparently it hasn’t solved the crises and conflicts of the region,” Chen said. “China has experienced the problem of foreign cultures and foreign value systems trying to impose their views on others ... We don’t have a view that we want to impose on the countries of the region.”

China’s growing economic and political clout hasn’t yet made itself felt in the Middle East, even as it has become the largest importer of the region’s oil, buying just over a 10th of the Gulf’s output and a quarter of Iran’s. But Beijing is starting to exercise unprecedented influence on critical issues, most notably by objecting efforts by the West to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.

China must invest in studying the region before it begins playing a bigger role, said Chen during a visit to Israel this week to meet with academics and government officials. That effort is under way, with China expanding its academic research to include more on-the ground contacts in education, culture and technology.

Chen himself led a 10-person delegation to Israel in a trip sponsored by the US-based Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange.

Beijing’s leaders better understand the sensitivity of the countries of the Middle East to interference by foreign powers in their domestic affairs because China, too, suffered European-colonial intervention, said Chen.

Washington has been criticized in the Arab world for lobbying in the region for more democracy and free-market economics to ensure political stability. Although the Obama administration has been less forthright in pushing that agenda, US Secretary of State Hillary warned the region’s leaders recently that democratic reforms were necessary to prevent popular rebellions like the one that toppled Tunisia’s regime.

“China is looking at this region from a very different perspective than the US, British and French. We’ve been there and we understand why local people don’t want to listen to other countries telling them what to do,” said Chen.

While China has generally been quietly supportive of US policies in the region, the two powers have been at loggerheads over Iran. Beijing has only reluctantly consented to the US-led campaign of ever-tougher sanctions aimed at convincing Iran to halt its nuclear-development program, which the West believes is aimed at building atomic weapons. China not only imports Iranian oil but has extensive business dealing in Iran.

“China agrees with international nuclear community that it doesn’t want to see unstable regimes having nuclear weapons but we don’t consider Iran an unstable regime,” Chen said. “China considers itself a friend of Iran, not as an enemy.”

While China’s energy needs are enormous and growing – 58 percent of all its oil come from the Middle East – Chen said he doesn’t expect Beijing to favor Israel’s Arab foes.

Israel and China established diplomatic relations in 1992 and since then have developed extensive trade ties, including arms and technology deals. But two-way trade amounted to just $4.6 billion in 2009 and ties have in the past been troubled by US restrictions on Israel’s exports of defense technology to China. In 2000, Jerusalem was forced to cancel a deal to sell its Phalcon airborne early-warning system to Beijing.

By comparison, Chinese exports to the Middle East, including Turkey, were worth $57 billion in 2009, while imports from the region stood at $61 billion.

A reliable supply of oil is critical to China ’s economy, but Chen said Israel’s expertise in technology is also important to economic development as China seeks to move up the value chain from churning out products for foreign companies and develop its own innovative technology. Chinese policy makers admire Israel’s capacity for technological innovation.

“Leaders of society realize that innovation and technology is important to an economy,” said Chen, who is helping to edit a Chinese translation of “Start-Up Nation,” a US bestseller lauding Israel’s high technology prowess. “From that perspective, Israel will play a much more important role in the near and distant future. It’s already happening.”

In addition, in contrast to Europe, Israel retains a positive image in Chinese public opinion, said Chen, who also serves as director of Beijing University’s Hebrew Institute, and has written books on the Bible and translated the Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua.

“Israel is one of the hottest topics discussed by intellectual and policy makers relative to its size and population,” he said. “In Beijing and Shanghai, you can see a lot of young Israeli tourists and business people with prominent, high profile companies.”

Among academics, however, the translation into Chinese of Edward Said’s book “Orientalism” — a scathing critique of Western scholarship of the Middle East which has influenced attitudes toward the region since it was published in 1978 — has recently become influential in China as well.

“Even though it didn’t talk about Israel and the current status of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, it has a wide following among scholars, especially historians and literary theorists,” Chen said.