The New Silk Roads: China, the UAE, and the Making of Globalization

(3 Credits)

How do China and the United Arab Emirates shape each other, and how do ordinary people experience their political, economic, cultural, and social connections to make globalization? This course examines the historical and contemporary realities of China–UAE ties and the making of new silk roads. Moving beyond Western narratives, we approach China and the Gulf as participants in a dynamic South–South exchange shaped by trade, migration, religion, language, education, and state-led development. Students will study the long history of interaction between China and the Arab and Islamic worlds and the Gulf's evolving position in global networks as the foundation for analyzing recent developments, including China’s economic expansion, the Belt and Road Initiative, and Chinese migration to the UAE. Fieldwork across diasporic markets, Chinese-language schools, and mosques reveals how globalization is not solely driven by states or corporations, but produced by migrants, merchants, teachers, religious leaders, consumers, and families. Completing a final digital ethnography, students will analyze globalization as a lived and contested reality shaped through everyday intercultural encounters.