If you read the article, OP was obviously responding to the silly claim that
"More likely, however, China’s dependence on trade, and particularly its interest in Middle East oil, may fall almost as fast as it has risen over the past thirty years."
I think OP was just pointing out that there is more than oil in the Middle East.
Now readers are bound to come up with common tropes like "sectarian strife" or "tribal rivalry", but again.. he made it sound like there's a transdimensional portal hidden in the ME or something.. clearly had a non-obvious aspect in mind, that I wanted elaboration on. =)