Sino–Arab relations

Sino–Arab relations have extended historically back to the first Caliphate, with important trade routes, and good diplomatic relations. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC), modern Sino-Arab relations have gotten significantly closer, with the China–Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) helping the People's Republic of China and the Arab nations to establish a new partnership in an era of the growing globalization. As a result, close economic, political and military relations between the two sides have been maintained.
 From 2018, the relations became significantly warmer, with the PRC and the Arab countries exchanging state visits, establishing cooperation mechanism and providing support to each other. 
Since 1990, no Arab country has official diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (ROC), although it is diplomatically represented in some nations via Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices.
History
Medieval era
During the Tang dynasty, when relations with Arabs were first established, the Chinese called the Arabs Old Chi.
 The Caliphate was called "Da Shi Guo" .
 The word is thought to be a transcription of Persian Tāzik or Tāzī, derived from a nisba of the Arab tribe Ṭayyiʾ.
 The modern term for Arab is (Ālābó or Alabo).
The Arab Islamic Caliph Uthman Ibn Affan (r. 644–656) sent an embassy to the Tang court at Chang'an.
 Arab sources claim Qutayba ibn Muslim briefly took Kashgar from China and withdrew after an agreement but modern historians entirely dismiss this claim. 
The Arab Umayyad Caliphate in 715 AD deposed Ikhshid, the king the Fergana Valley, and installed a new king Alutar on the throne. The deposed king fled to Kucha (seat of Anxi Protectorate), and sought Chinese intervention. 

The Chinese sent 10,000 troops under Zhang Xiaosong to Fergana. He defeated Alutar and the Arab occupation force at Namangan and reinstalled Ikhshid on the throne. 
Chinese General Tang Jiahui led the Chinese to defeat the following Arab-Tibetan attack in the Battle of Aksu (717).
 The attack on Aksu was joined by Turgesh Khan Suluk.
 Both Uch Turfan and Aksu were attacked by the Turgesh, Arab, and Tibetan force on 15 August 717. Qarluqs serving under Chinese command, under Arsila Xian, a Western Turkic Qaghan serving under the Chinese Assistant Grand Protector General Tang Jiahui defeated the attack. Al-Yashkuri, the Arab commander and his army fled to Tashkent after they were defeated. 
Although the Tang dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate had fought at Talas, on June 11, 758, an Abbasid embassy arrived at Chang'an simultaneously with the Uyghur Khaganate envoys in order to pay tribute.
 A Chinese captured at Talas, Du Huan, was brought to Baghdad and toured throughout the caliphate. He observed that in Merv, Khurasan, Arabs and Persians lived in mixed concentrations. He gave an account of the Arab people in the Tongdian in 801 which he wrote when he returned to China.
Arabia [Dashi] was originally part of Persia. The men have high noses, are dark, and bearded. The women are very fair [white] and when they go out they veil the face. Five times daily they worship God [Tianshen]. They wear silver girdles, with silver knives suspended. They do not drink wine, nor use music. Their place of worship will accommodate several hundreds of people. Every seventh day the king (Caliph) sits on high, and speaks to those below saying, ' Those who are killed by the enemy will be born in heaven above; those who slay the enemy will receive happiness.' Therefore they are usually valiant fighters. Their land is sandy and stony, not fit for cultivation; so they hunt and eat flesh.

This (Kufa) is the place of their capital. Its men and women are attractive in appearance and large in stature. Their clothing is handsome, and their carriage and demeanor leisurely and lovely. When women go outdoors, they always cover their 
Faces, regardless of whether they are noble or base. They pray to heaven five times a day. They eat meat even when practicing abstention, for they believe the taking of life to be meritorious.
The followers of the confession of the “Dashi” (the Arabs) have a means to denote the degrees of family relations, but it is degenerated and they don’t bother about it. They don’t eat the meat of pigs, dogs, donkeys and horses, they don’t respect neither the king of the country, neither their parents, they don’t believe in supernatural powers, they perform sacrifice to heaven and to no one else. According their customs every seventh day is a holiday, on which no trade and no cash transactions are done, whereas when they drink alcohol, they are behaving in a ridiculous and undisciplined way during the whole day.
An Arab envoy presented horses and a girdle to the Chinese in 713, but he refused to pay homage to the Emperor, said, he said "In my country we only bow to God never to a Prince". The first thing the court was going to do was to murder the envoy, however, a minister intervened, saying "a difference in the court etiquette of foreign countries ought not to be considered a crime." A second Arab envoy performed the required rituals and paid homage to the Emperor in 726 A.D. He was gifted with a "purple robe and a girdle".
There was a controversy between the Arab ambassadors and Uyghur Khaganate Ambassadors over who should go first into the Chinese court, they were then guided by the Master of Ceremonies into two different entrances. Three Da shi ambassadors arrived at the Tang court in 798 A.D. A war which was raging between the Arabs and Tibetans from 785 to 804 benefited the Chinese. 
Products were traded by sea routes between China and Arabs. 
Military and political relations
One legend among Muslims in China said that China during the Tang dynasty exchanged 3,000 Chinese soldiers sending them to the Arabs and the Arabs in turn sent 3000 Arab Muslim soldiers to China. 

In 756, 3,000 Arab mercenaries joined the Chinese against An Lushan
A massacre of foreign Arab and Persian Muslim merchants by Tian Shengong happened during the An Lushan rebellion in the Yangzhou massacre (760),
 since Tian Shengong was defecting to the Tang dynasty and wanted them to publicly recognized and acknowledge him, and the Tang court portrayed the war as between rebel hu barbarians of the Yan against Han Chinese of the Tang dynasty, Tian Shengong slaughtered foreigners as a blood sacrifice to prove he was loyal to the Han Chinese Tang dynasty state and for them to recognize him as a regional warlord without him giving up territory, and he killed other foreign Hu barbarian ethnicities 
As well whose ethnic groups were not specified, not only Arabs and Persians since it was directed against all foreigners.
 The Tang dynasty recovered its power decades after the An Lushan rebellion and was still able to launch offensive conquests and campaigns like its destruction of the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia in 840-847.
 It was the Huang Chao rebellion in 874–884 by the native Han rebel Huang Chao that permanently destroyed the power of the Tang dynasty since Huang Chao not only devastated the north but marched into southern China which An Lushan failed to do due to the Battle of Suiyang. Huang Chao's army in southern China committed the Guangzhou massacre against foreign Arab and Persian Muslim, Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian merchants in 878–879 at the seaport and trading entrepot of Guangzhou, and captured both Tang dynasty capitals, Luoyang and Chang'an. 
A medieval Chinese source claimed that Huang Chao killed 8 million people.
 Even though Huang Chao was eventually defeated, the Tang Emperors lost all their power to regional jiedushi and Huang Chao's former lieutenant Zhu Wen who had defected to the Tang court turned the Tang emperors into his puppets and completed the destruction of Chang'an by dismantling Chang'an and transporting the materials east to Luoyang when he forced the court to move the capital. Zhu Wen deposed the last Tang Emperor in 907 and founded Later Liang (Five Dynasties), plunging China into the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period as regional jiedushi warlords declared their own dynasties and kingdoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Arab_relations