Writing for South China Morning Post, MEI Principal Research Fellow Alessandro Arduino says that China’s deliberately neutral stance towards both sides in Libya’s civil war is a strategy to reap economic benefits from good relations with either General Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) or the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and PetroChina respectively. Read the full article here.

Image caption: A PetroChina gas station attendant in Beijing. Photo: Frederic Brown/AFP.