China's global economic march is everywhere accompanied by predictions that rising diplomatic ambition will surely follow its cargo ships and plane loads of dark-suited businessmen - nowhere more so than in the Middle East.
Bridge-building visits by Chinese leaders to the region, and by regional leaders to China, have stoked forecasts that Beijing aspires to join, even eclipse, Washington as a regional broker in the arc of states from Iran to Egypt.
But Beijing -- preoccupied with its Asian neighbours, anxious not to confront Washington directly, and without the military reach to leave a lasting impression far from home -- lacks the will and means to play more than a second string in the volatile politics of the Middle East, China analysts told Reuters.
"China wants comprehensive relations with the Middle East -- trade and economic ties -- as well as political relations," said Yin Gang, an expert on China-Arab relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank in Beijing.
"But the regional leaders and the United States all understand that China can't play a big role. It wants to get along with the Middle East, but can't really do more."
The Middle East, including Iran, supplies China with about half of its crude imports. That figure will rise to about 70 percent by 2015, according to the International Energy Agency.
China's factories are bulging with cars, clothes and television sets that suit the incomes of poorer Middle Eastern countries. In the first nine months of 2006, Chinese exports to the Middle East reached $28.9 billion, a 38.1 percent jump from the same period in 2005, according to Chinese customs numbers.
And not least, Beijing is keen to earn respect as a great power and wants a role in settling international crises, of which the Middle East has plenty. China's leaders have wooed regional leaders with soothing words and peacekeepers in Lebanon.
"China is ready to work with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to strengthen peace and development in the Middle East," Chinese President Hu Jintao said in Saudi Arabia in April.
Energy and trade considerations are forcing Beijing policy-makers to pay growing attention to the Middle East, said Guo Xiangang, a former Chinese diplomat in Tehran now based at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing.
"The Chinese government has yet to make major adjustments in its Middle East policy, but there's a growing scholarly discussion about the role China could play there," he said.
But most analysts in China say the United States has nothing to be alarmed about. "I'd even say that the US is moving closer to Europe and China on problems like Iraq and Iran," said Yin, the Beijing analyst.
China's diplomatic foothold in the Middle East remains relatively small. And it must contend with the influence of France, Britain and Russia, as well as the United States.
China has also cultivated strong ties with Israel, and restricts its aid to the Palestinians to relatively small amounts, said Yin. "China also wants to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and that is precisely why we are now criticised for turning to Africa," he added.
China's biggest single crude oil import partner is now Angola, closely followed by Saudi Arabia. This month Beijing hosted a summit to court African leaders, but Western politicians and human rights groups have accused it of propping up brutal governments in Sudan and Zimbabwe.
China lacks the naval strength to steer its own course in the Middle East. Oil tankers travelling to China through the Gulf will continue to rely on the US security umbrella, analysts said. So eager for energy and trade but lacking strategic reach, China seems willing to wait, sometimes impatiently, in the ante-room of Middle Eastern influence.
"They want to keep as low a profile as possible on the political front, so as not to get drawn into the internecine battles," said John Calabrese, who studies China's regional role at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Hai dreams of learning Arabic and hopes one day to study in the Middle East.
For now, the 25-year-old is stuck in Beijing. It's thousands of miles from Mecca, but more and more Chinese Muslims are fulfilling their dreams of learning about their faith as the government relaxes controls over Islam to win hearts in the Middle East, where it seeks to strengthen trade and oil ties.
Hai goes to the mosque every day to pray as he did growing up in the north-western Chinese region of Ningxia, home to a majority of the country's estimated 20 million Muslims -- as many as live in Syria or Yemen.
"Not everyone was like that but my family was, and now more and more people are. Our religion is developing very quickly," said Hai, who declined to give his full name.
Pottering around his "Muslim products" shop, which sells everything from Islamic skullcaps and headscarves to dried figs and beaded handbags, Hai says his customers include a growing number of visitors from the Middle East.
The increase in Muslim visitors to China -- tourists, businessman and expatriates -- is causing a rise in religious observance among China's Hui, a Muslim group that traces its heritage to the Middle East and Central Asia.
"There is a strong influence of radical theology imported from the Middle East," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch and a specialist on China's Muslims.
"It's been very noticeable speaking to people in mosques across China. Whereas before they were completely cut off from the mainstream Muslim community, they're not anymore," he said.
China cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, leaving its Catholic community split between an underground church loyal to the Holy See and the official, state-backed church.
The government has also been cracking down on Christian "house churches", congregations of people who worship in private homes, away from the glare of officialdom. But Christianity does not come with an economic or energy element, key for China's rapidly expanding economy.
"The relationship with the Muslim Hui has always been a stake of international diplomacy, part of a charm offensive by China," said Bequelin. "This to a certain extent explains why the authorities have been more lenient."
The leniency extends only as far as the Hui. China's other Muslim group, the Uighurs, live mainly in the north-western region of Xinjiang and have close linguistic and cultural links with Central Asia.
With aspirations for greater autonomy, Uighurs are seen as an ethnic problem and subject to much tighter controls. In dusty Tongxin, a Hui Muslim-majority county in Ningxia, the area's mosques, devastated in the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, have been rebuilt with surprising splendour for one of the country's poorest regions.
One religious leader, who runs an Islamic girls school, in the town of 300,000 was vague about funding for the rebuilding. "We rely on introductions from friends coming here and giving a bit of money or help," said the woman, who asked not to be named.
The religious leader says she has 68 students in her school. The youngest is 15, despite an official ban on religious education for anyone under 18.
"When I graduated from high school, in 1986, the situation was very difficult," said the woman. "Now the religious policies are more relaxed. We can go ahead without fear."
Most of her students wear heardscarves, although it is rare to see women wearing the Islamic headdress in the area. A record 9,600 Chinese Muslims are expected to leave for a pilgrimage to Mecca this year, escorted by China's Patriotic Islamic Association. Many more will likely go independently, through a third country.
China's Religious Affairs Bureau did not respond to faxed questions on numbers of Chinese making the pilgrimage, funding links and student exchanges. The government is betting on its unspoken compromise with China's Hui that the community will steer clear of political engagement in exchange for greater religious freedom.
"They're banking on the fact that China's Muslims are aware of the limits and the rules and they know how to play the game," said Dru Gladney, an expert at Pomona College in California. For now, it's a compromise that seems to be working.
The religious leader in Ningxia says she's happy to be able to worship in peace and teach her community freely, after enduring a lifetime of much stricter controls.
"The national policies are opening up and as long as you don't go against the country's religious policies and regulations, you can freely progress," she said.