What emerges clearly from the Arab Barometer results is a stark message: ordinary Arabs want economic dignity and are desperately searching for a system of governance that can offer it. And because democracy has failed to deliver economically across the Middle East, many ordinary Arabs—including some who had hoped for democracy a decade ago—now appear more open to the authoritarian models offered by China and Russia. Since the late 1970s, the Chinese system has lifted more than 800 million people out of extreme poverty, according to the World Bank—just the kind of economic transformation that many across the Middle East are desperate to achieve. In China, GDP per capita was $2,194 in 2000 and reached $10,431 in 2020. Russia’s GDP per capita roughly quadrupled over those 20 years, from around $7,000 to about $28,000. Meanwhile, average GDP per capita in the wealthy countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development barely doubled, rising from around $25,000 to around $45,000.

As the United States has focused less on the Middle East, China and Russia have stepped in. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has signed economic cooperation agreements with several Arab governments. As the researcher Charles Dunne has noted, “China became the largest foreign investor in the region in 2016, and since BRI was inaugurated, Beijing has pumped at least $123 billion into the Middle East in BRI-related project financing.” Russia has not provided the same type of economic aid but has played an active military role. By intervening to support its allies in Libya and Syria, Moscow signaled its reengagement with the region after decades of retrenchment following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It comes as no surprise, then, that many Arabs are inclined to want their government to forge stronger economic ties with Beijing and Moscow, even if doing so means reducing their country’s economic links with the United States.