U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has already indicated that the Middle East is going to be a central focus of his second term's foreign policy. He's already named Elise Stefanik, a fiercely pro-Israel lawmaker, to be his ambassador at the United Nations and he's been in regular contact since his election last week with both Arab and Israeli leaders.

But Trump is coming back to power at a time when the region is very different than when he left office in 2020. Back then, China was a marginal player in Mideast diplomacy which is no longer the case. China's economic and diplomatic influence in the region has increased significantly over the past four years.

In this special edition, produced in partnership with The ChinaMed Project, Eric hosts six of the world's leading China-Mideast scholars to discuss their forecast for how Donald Trump's re-election will impact U.S.-China relations in the region.

The conversation is divided into two parts:

Panel 1: How the arrival of a new U.S. President fits in the national strategies of regional actors and their relations with China

• Ahmed Aboudouh is the head of the China studies unit at the Emirates Policy Center and an associate fellow at the Chatham House in London.
• Gedaliah Afterman is the head of the Asia-Israel policy program at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations and a lecturer at Reichman University and Tel Aviv University.
• Jonathan Fulton is an assistant professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.

Panel 2: How a new US President will/might shape US-China relations in the Middle East

• Dawn Murphy is an associate professor of national security strategy at the U.S. National War College.
• Zhang Chuchu is an associate professor of international relations in the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai and she is the deputy director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University.
• Mohammed Al Alsudairi is a lecturer in politics and international relations of the Arabic speaking world at the Australian National University in Canberra.

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