A Forgotten Microhistory in the Era of the Belt and Road Initiative: Sawt al-Arab (June 2013 - June 2017) and Arab Elite Sojourners in China
Older Arab generations will recall Sawt al-Arab (صوت العرب, Voice of the Arabs), a Cairo-based pan-Arab radio station launched by Gamal Abdel Nasser in July 1953 (James 2006). Its broadcasts once reached all segments of the Arab masses, delivering daily messages of Arab unity, solidarity, and hope (Abdou 2022). Indeed, the communications scholar Douglas A. Boyd has described it as probably the most well-known Arab radio broadcasting by the mid-1970s.
While the radio station now tends to be largely forgotten, an Arabic-language monthly magazine that carries the same name appeared in June 2013 in Guangzhou, China. The most immediate impression Sawt al-Arab leaves a casual reader is its sophisticated production aesthetic that resembles some of the most glamorous fashion magazines. The magazine’s 70-plus pages were made of thick copperplate papers filled with coloured pictures and walls of text – a unique and powerful visual display that remains no less striking today.
My goal in this piece is to explore what Sawt al-Arab might tell us about China-Middle East relations in the era of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This is a magazine that was shaped by social forces that are often missed in top-down grand narratives and interpretive frames. My key argument is that Sawt al-Arab represents a microhistory of efforts by a cohort of Arab intellectual and social elites in China, who sought to achieve their business ambitions through building closer connections with the political sphere. Along with providing a window into the elite segment of Arab communities in China, this can also tell us much about the agency and potential of diasporic printing.
Figure 2: Front cover of the 1st issue of Sawt al-Arab
Figure 3: A sample page from the 24th issue of Sawt al-Arab
Connecting elites
Though a diasporic periodical, Sawt al-Arab was not an overseas extension of Arab media, nor a grassroots example of diasporic print culture. It was the collective brainchild of several Guangzhou-based Arab sojourners with no media background. These included Adil al-Talibi (b. 1966), a Libyan businessman based in China since early 2000s and vice president of the organisation the Council of Arab Communities in China (مجلس الجاليات العربية في الصين) at the time, and Ali Abu Marehel (b. 1981), a Palestinian writer who had lived in China since 2010. The shared name of the 2013 magazine and the 1953 radio station was not a coincidence. Al-Talibi confirmed to me that Sawt al-Arab was named after Nasser’s radio station, of which he was a loyal fan (as well as an unwavering advocate of pan-Arabism). Indeed, the first issue of the magazine was published in June 2013, six decades after the founding of the radio station.
Ali Abu Marehel was the editor-in-chief of the first issue. The publication quickly spread throughout Arab networks in China. The second issue was published one month later and saw five more people joining the editorial team as co-editors, including Mohamed al-Shafi’a (an Egyptian with a PhD degree in political science, who was a senior official of the Arab League to China), Sameeh Girgish (PhD in Islamic law, the president of Jordanian Community in China), Raafi’a Abu Rahmah (PhD in international law, a China-based Palestinian writer), Hassan al-Khaashab (PhD in general surgery, Yemeni doctor working in China), and Riyad al-Ma’arrawi (PhD in international trading law). In later issues, several others joined the editorial team, including Adil al-Muslamaani (the Egyptian president of the Arab-China Commercial Associated & Cultural Exchange Council, which was established in 2002 in Syria, and affiliated with the Arab League), and Manal Mukhtar (a Sudanese doctor working in China, who was the first foreign graduate specialised in organ transplantation). As these biographical details show, this growing editorial team brought together the intellectual and social elite of Arab communities in China, many of whom had taken advantages of trading and educational opportunities in China.
The high production quality of Sawt al-Arab was not just a result of its editorial team, but also its commissioned writers. The magazine invited diplomats and Arab PhD graduates from Chinese universities to contribute short essays on a range of topics. These included China-related content such as Chinese regulations and laws (e.g., arbitration law, intellectual property law, anti-money laundering regulations), short articles on health issues, residency regulations for foreigners, the Guangzhou-Hong Kong high speed rail timetable, essays on Chinese culture, history, politics, economy, societies, and tourism, and poems and prose composed by Arab sojourners in China. Alongside articles such as these, the magazine carried interviews with politicians in each issue. It is this feature that makes Sawt al-Arab the first Arab political publication published in China.
Targeting top politicians through journalism
Sawt al-Arab claims to represent the voices of Arabs in China (as the title itself indicates). But it was not directed towards them. Unlike the Arab community magazine Youth in China, free copies of Sawt al-Arab were not circulated in places frequented by Arab sojourners such as halal restaurants of Middle Eastern cuisine, and private Arab schools in Guangzhou and Yiwu. Instead, the magazine’s main target audience is discernible through a closer look at its contents.
Each issue featured an interview conducted with a top politician. The list of the interviewees indicates the breadth of the magazine’s networks, including heads of state, party leaders, influential Arab policymakers, and senior Chinese officials.[2] Geographically, these individuals were drawn not only from Arab countries and China, but also Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. In addition, Sawt al-Arab reported on Arabic diplomatic visits to China, cultural and social events among the Arab communities, and activities held by embassies and Arab organisations in China.
These leading political figures and others holding key positions in China-Arab commercial, cultural, and educational sectors constitute the magazine’s main target audience. This is in part because al-Talibi and the other writers and editors looked ahead to their China-based business careers which, they hoped, would be helped with strong connections to these individuals. In other words, in their networking and socialising, the magazine functioned as a “business card” and a portable repository of first-hand storytelling resources about Arabs in the diaspora and China-MENA connections.
There was a second type of target audience—a group I call the “attention audience.”[3] This group is made up of readers who are actively ‘produced’ through consuming the magazine’s content. They could not be known by the editors beforehand. But through reading and engaging with the articles this audience gained a sense of being part of the community of Arabs living in China. They came to appreciate Sawt al-Arab for its high production quality, strong and deep-rooted networks in China, sense of journalistic responsibility, and the ways in which the magazine served the Arab diaspora in China.
To foster this community, the editors added photos to the interview transcripts and reportage of activities that each issue features, with an eye to guiding readers to information that was conveyed in, and through, the layout of the pages. Selected photos illustrate three “facts”: the magazine’s journalist was with the interviewees and at the scene (Figure 4); the interviewees showed concern with Sawt al-Arab (Figure 5); and the magazine’s journalist was invited to attend the events. To have done so is to visualise the privileged relations Sawt al-Arab had with those top politicians, and the close connection between it and Arab communities and organisations in China.
Figure 4: The reporter with the then Egyptian ambassador in China
Figure 5: Mahathir bin Mohamed reading Sawt al-Arab
An ephemeral publication
Alongside the publication of the first issue of Sawt al-Arab in June 2013 was the launch of the website www.sawthal-arab.com to which the PDF format of most of the issues were uploaded for free download. In the four years that followed, the magazine became increasingly professionalised. This is shown by at least four changes the editorial team made on the contents page. For one, the magazine’s address was changed from its Guangzhou office address to Hong Kong. Second, following the sixth issue, an opinion disclaimer was included.[4] Third, on the issues 9, 10, and 11, names of the general manager, executive manager, and editor-in-chief were written in Chinese. Fourth, the website address was changed on the fifth or sixth issue from www.sawthal-arab.com to www.sawtal3rab.com. In addition, in September 2016, the magazine opened its Facebook page “Arab Voice Media Corporation.”
Despite these developments, Sawt al-Arab was short-lived, with only four years of publication (2013-2017) and a total of thirty issues published.[5] It was established two months before the launch of the BRI in September 2013, which encouraged many Arabs to embark on transnational business with, in, or through China. On 28 September 2016, the magazine’s Facebook page announced that the English version of Sawt al-Arab was coming soon “to reach more readers and cover more countries!!!”[6]. But this never happened – and the reasons for the magazine’s discontinuation remain unknown.
Multiple ways to understand Sawt al-Arab
The motivations and agendas of Sawt al-Arab’s founders and editorial board were not reducible to simply wanting to publish a diasporic magazine. The magazine was a vehicle that connected Arab intellectuals and social elites in China through editorship and authorship, and helped them expand their network with the political sphere. On the pages of Sawt al-Arab, Arab elites could carve out their visions of China and the Arab world, situated within a broader geographical, political, economic, and imaginary of the “South.” Sawt al-Arab, as a four-year effort of diasporic journalism, is one part of the developmental trajectory of the BRI that points to the importance of Arab diasporic communities as actors and makers of China-MENA connections. These communities have received too little attention to date.
Sources
Abdou, Ibrahim. 2022. “Sout al-Arab radio: Nasser’s paradox of unity.” Egyptian Streets. https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/02/07/sout-al-arab-radio-nassers-paradox-of-unity/
Boyd, Douglas A. 1975. “Development of Egypt’s radio: ‘voice of the Arabs’ under Nasser.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 52 (4), 645-653.
James, Laura. 2006. “Whose voice? Nasser, the Arabs, and ‘Sawt al-Arab’ radio.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/whose-voice-nasser-the-arabs-and-sawt-al-arab-radio/
Leow, Rachel. 2020. “Weeping Qingdao tear abroad: locating Chinese publics in colonial Malaya, circa 1919.” Itinerario 44 (2), 316-340.
[1] All pictures in this blog are from the author’s collection.
[2] Some of these individuals included: Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi (president of Yemen from 2012 to 2014), Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (Ugandan president), Mahmoud Abbas (president of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian National Authority), Mohamed Moncef Marzouki (Tunisian president from 2011 to 14), Daniel Ortega (Nicaraguan president), Ageela Saleh (the president of the Tobruk-based legislature the House of Representatives in 2015), Mahathir bin Mohamed (the 4th and 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia), Abdul Salam al Badri (Libyan Deputy Prime Minister in 2015), Fayez Mustaf al Sarraj (prime minister of the Libyan Government of National Accord from 2016 to 2021), Rached Ghannouchi (Tunisian politician and the co-founder of the Ennahdha Party), Omar Ahmad Adi al Bitar (Emirati ambassador to China), Hassane Rabehi (Algerian ambassador to China), Mohammad Saleh al Thuwaikh (Kuwaiti ambassador to China), Ahmed Ramadan (Palestinian ambassador to China), Nabil el Araby (Secretary General of the Arab League ), Magdi Amer (Egyptian ambassador to China), Omar Tantush (chargé d'affaires of Libyan to China), and Wu Sike (China’s Special Envoy on the Middle East Issue from 2009 to 2014)
[3] My proposal of this term was inspired by the term “Chinese attention publics” proposed by Rachel Leow in her exploration of the different “we” publics convened within the newspaper Yik Khuan Poh (2020).
[4] “The articles included in this issue do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the magazine, but rather represent its owners” (المقالات الواردة في هذا العدد لا تعبر بالضرورة عن راي المجلة ،انما تمثل أصحابها.)
[5] It discontinued publication in January and February, the festive seasons of Chinese New Year when many Arabs chose to leave. Only four issues came out in 2015.
[6] www.facebook.com/317880891936704/photos/pb.100070330475847.-2207520000./334270613631065/?type=3