{"id":11539,"date":"2022-12-11T16:40:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T14:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=11539"},"modified":"2022-12-11T16:40:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T14:40:44","slug":"new-era-in-chinas-relations-with-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=11539","title":{"rendered":"“New era” in China’s relations with Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For a “new era” in China’s relations with the countries of the Persian Gulf and especially Saudi Arabia, Chinese leader Xi Jinping wrote in an article in the media of Saudi Arabia. And he made sure to underline that China and Saudi Arabia “respect each other’s sovereignty and development path as well as history and cultural traditions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tone was clearly different from the one traditionally adopted by the American side, which, despite emphasizing the traditional ties between the two countries, does not fail to raise human rights issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, Xi Jinping did not mention anything on the issue of OPEC+ decisions on production cuts, unlike the US which has put a lot of pressure on Riyadh to increase production to contain crude oil prices.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The uniqueness of Saudi Arabia and China relations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relations between the two countries are unique given the large economic scope that characterizes them. China is the largest trading partner with bilateral trade reaching $87.3 billion in 2021. Chinese exports to Saudi Arabia reached $30.3 billion, while China imported $57 billion from Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, Saudi Arabia is China’s main supplier of crude oil. It accounts for 18% of China’s total oil imports. China imports about 1.77 million barrels of crude oil per day, and imports in the first 10 months of 2022 reached $55 billion. Saudi Aramco has deals with several Chinese refineries and has also decided to build a $10 billion petrochemical complex in northeast China, its biggest investment there yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the two countries also have business partnerships in other major energy projects inside and outside Saudi Arabia. A part of China’s “One Belt One Road” strategy is precisely about cooperation with Saudi Arabia at various levels.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Signing of important agreements between the two countries<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xi’s visit includes the signing of important agreements between the two countries: a strategic cooperation agreement that includes meetings between the two leaders every two years and 34 business agreements totaling close to $30 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agreements also included a memorandum of cooperation between Huawei and the Ministry of Communications of Saudi Arabia for the construction of a 10Gbps mobile internet network, as well as a cloud computing facility. They also signed agreements for 300,000 homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese electric vehicle maker Enovate Motors also signed a memorandum of understanding with a Saudi holding company for a factory in the kingdom that will make 100,000 cars a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We note that the US has prevented Huawei from participating in major projects in Western countries, arguing that it would have security risks. In fact, they have expressed their opposition to the expansion of the company in the Gulf and have warned that in some areas cooperation with China could affect the overall cooperation between the US and Arab countries. In particular, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US is monitoring China’s efforts to increase its influence in various parts of the world, including the Middle East. In fact, Kirby pointed out that while America was not asking countries to choose between Washington and Beijing, US policies “have been better at maintaining prosperity and security for countries around the world than what it demonstrates ” China”.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A changing world<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

China obviously does not have the same scale of military relations with Saudi Arabia as the US, which maintains military bases on the Kingdom’s territory and which has very large deals to sell military equipment to Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration recently approved the sale of Patriot batteries to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at the same time it is clear that Riyadh is not interested in being just an ally of the West. After all, this was seen in the reluctance to impose sanctions on Russia, but also in the fact that within OPEC+ Saudi Arabia and Russia are coordinating the decisions to reduce production in order to contain crude oil prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this points to the way that beyond the narrow core of Western countries, that is, the G7 countries, the EU, Oceania, there is a wide range of countries that are currently avoiding choosing sides and are simply looking for beneficial relations. This greatly facilitates China’s strategy which is basically a strategy of economic cooperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With countries like Saudi Arabia, China can at the same time secure access to the energy flows for which it is “thirsty” and at the same time be able to export its technological products, expand the corridors for its exports, make investments in technological and energy sectors. And of course, in this way, he gradually gains political influence as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a “new era” in China’s relations with the countries of the Persian Gulf and especially Saudi Arabia, Chinese leader Xi Jinping wrote in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,834],"tags":[161,1040,1562,1107,215,70,2187],"class_list":["post-11539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitical","category-middle-east-geopolitical","tag-china","tag-middle-east","tag-opec","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11545,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11539\/revisions\/11545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}