Research & Commentary Results

Dubai is strategically located at a junction between Europe, Africa, and the Far East. For China, an emerging global leader in trade and international business, Dubai is a promising place in which to conduct business. Exploring Dubai-Sino economic relations beckons a more comprehensive understanding of both the level of Dubai’s economic diversification and the impact of the global financial crisis. Dubai’s private sector is extensively engaged in foreign trade, with an emphasis on the service industry. The service industry has three subsectors—tourism, finance, and real estate. Assessing the trajectory of China’s involvement in these three sectors of Dubai’s economy sheds light on how Dubai-Sino economic relations have been affected by the global financial crisis.

Like pieces fitting together in a jigsaw puzzle, Arab governments – presumably from the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council – offered to finance a U.S. military strike on Syria, according to comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry during testimony September 4 with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In an exchange with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on the potential cost of U.S. military action in Syria, Kerry said,

“Open Doors; Open Minds”—the tagline of the Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding (SMCCU), a non-profit organization advocating awareness and understanding among the various cultures that live in Dubai—epitomizes Dubai’s emergence as an international trade and transit hub as well as a place of cultural symbiosis that hosts diverse nationalities from almost all corners of the globe.

While visiting Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi frequently over the past 20 years, I couldn’t fail to notice that the three cities have increasingly, inexorably become a metropolitan area, ever merging as they build and develop in each other’s direction.

Over the past several decades, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been transformed into one of the world’s most robust economies. The key to the UAE’s success has been economic diversification; indeed, oil now accounts for only one-third of the country’s GDP. According to UAE Ministry of Foreign Trade Reports, the value of non-oil exports increased thirtyfold during the period 1981-2009. Dubai accounted for approximately 82 percent of non-oil exports in the UAE in 2010, while Abu Dhabi accounted for 14 percent. In particular, by setting up over two dozen free zones as platforms for nearly all industry sectors, the UAE has become far less dependent on oil.

Since the 1970s oil boom, the Gulf region has been one of the principal destinations for workers from South Asia, with the result that today Indians constitute a large percentage of the non-nationals living in the region. Indeed, at five million out of an estimated 15 million people, the Indian community forms the largest expatriate group in each of the Gulf countries. Most Indian immigrants are from the south Indian state of Kerala, while many of the rest originate from Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

When the young Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani became ruler of Qatar last month after his father stepped aside in a seamless transition, one of his first official acts was to seal the generational shift by appointing a new prime minister.

The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East, by Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Byman et al., 2011

The Takaful industry has expanded rapidly in recent years.[1] In 2011, the industry recorded 19% higher growth than in the previous year. Takaful is generally regarded as a profitable product with ample growth potential. With strong support from industry players, government institutions and increasing awareness among customers, the Takaful industry is expected to develop further in the coming years.

Asia constitutes the hub of the transformation of global economic power today. The Gulf, itself part of Asia, is of increasing importance in this transformation. This book documents the growing interactions between the economies of the Gulf states and those of the rest of Asia. These relationships are critical to how the world economy develops over the next decade, and how economic (and perhaps strategic) power is distributed.

With the shift in the direction of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries’ trade from the West to Asia and the emphasis on the “Islamic connection” by Malaysia and many of its Middle Eastern counterparts, Malaysia-GCC economic cooperation appears to be gaining momentum. Malaysia’s strategic location at the center of Southeast Asia and the need for as well as the apparent determination of Malaysia and the GCC countries to diversify their export markets could provide the impetus for this partnership to flourish.

The GRC’s April 2013 Gulf-Asia Bulletin, edited by Noriko Suzuki, contains the following short pieces:

• On OSIPP-GRC Academic Cooperation by Toshiya Hoshino |04
• Japan-Gulf Relations in the Wider Gulf-Asia Context by Makio Yamada |06
• Japan and the Gulf: Balanced Business Relationship, and Thereafter by Yoshio Minagi |10
• A General History of Kuwait-Japan Economic Relations from the 1950s to the 1970s by Takumi Sato |14

The Asia Cooperation Dialogue’s (ACD) future looks promising. The 11-year-old ACD has taken important steps in becoming a relevant, constructive pan-Asian body with a forward-looking agenda, concrete plans and projects underway, and some noteworthy accomplishments.

Although China and India have been new favorable destinations for Arab investors, Southeast Asian countries offer distinctive and profitable investment markets, featuring high demand and relatively low labor costs. In recent years, investments from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have surged.

Many Muslim women do not choose to forego education, but rather are unable to access this basic right mainly due to a lack of opportunity and socio-political constraints. The sharply contrasting cases of India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are illuminating in this respect. While the Indian case presents a stark picture, the Emirati case presents a bright and more hopeful one.