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Xi’s trip, which will be accompanied by 3 regional summits, aims to deepen a courtship with the Gulf states that has evolved beyond oil.
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By Vivian Nereim and David Pierson
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Chinese leader Xi Jinping will visit Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for a series of meetings with heads of state from across the Middle East, a region where longtime U. S. allies are growing closer to China.
Xi’s scale is aimed at deepening China’s decades-old ties with the Gulf region, which began as an attempt to secure oil and have since morphed into complex dating involving arms sales, generation transfers and infrastructure projects.
“When Gulf countries talk about their future, they see China as their partner,” said Gedaliah Afterman, director of the Asian policy program at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and International Relations at Reichman University in Israel.
The economic interests shared by both countries are clear: China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner, while Saudi Arabia is one of China’s largest oil suppliers. .
The two governments have also uncovered a not unusual cause as authoritarian states willing to forget about each other’s human rights violations. Both chafe at the concept that foreigners interfere in their internal affairs.
During the three-day visit, the Chinese leader will attend the Saudi-China, Gulf-China and Saudi-China summits, the Saudi state news firm reported on Tuesday. More than 30 heads of state and heads of organizations plan to attend, according to the report, adding that Saudi Arabia and China will signal a “strategic partnership. “
This sends a message that Beijing’s influence in the region is developing at a time when U. S. officials say they need to make the Middle East a lower priority, focusing diplomatic and military resources on Asia and Europe.
The scale will inevitably be compared to the arrival of Donald J. Trump to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for his first foreign trip as a preaspectnt in 2017. Courted by Saudi officials, he was greeted in streets decorated with American flags and a huge symbol. of his face. Projected on the appearance of a building.
Saudi Arabia has been America’s closest best friend. The U. S. for more than half a century, and the U. S. It is once again the main guarantor of the security of the oil-rich kingdom, promoting the maximum of its armament. But Saudi leaders have long sought other alliances to prepare. so they see it as an emerging multipolar world, with China as a key superpower.
Meanwhile, U. S. -China relations are in the U. S. The U. S. and Saudi Arabia have been turbulent in recent years, hitting one low after another. During the election campaign, President Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah. “
After taking office, his management declared a “recalibration” of the dates and pressured the kingdom over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national and U. S. resident. The U. S. military at the time, through Saudi agents in Istanbul.
The technique has inflammation in the kingdom’s corridors of strength, where Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, who is prime minister and de facto leader, sees himself as a rising world leader and sees his country as a regional force that is too big for Be light.
More recently, U. S. and Saudi officials traded barbs over an October resolution to cut oil production through OPEC Plus, an energy-producing cartel in which Saudi Arabia plays a key role, with one side accusing the other of exploiting the move for political reasons.
“Obviously, Xi needs to make a decision at a time when U. S. -Saudi relations are tense,” said James Dorsey, a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
“It’s a smart time to replant the flag, if you wish. And I think it’s a smart time for the Gulf states to say, ‘Hey, we have other options. ‘Washington, you’re not alone.
In July, Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia for his own state visit, in part to rebuild the relationship. It was a low-key affair, which U. S. officials said was at Biden’s behest; greeted Prince Mohammed with a punch.
At a summit with Arab leaders in the coastal city of Jeddah, he sought to assure U. S. allies of the U. S. that they would not be able to do so. U. S. I would not leave the region.
“We’re going to pull out and leave a vacuum for China, Russia or Iran to fill,” Biden said.
Just days after M. Biden’s departure, China’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia wrote a thinly veiled op-ed in a major Saudi newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, in which he hinted that Western powers had treated Saudi Arabia with “arrogance” and contrasted this with China’s respect for its Arab partners.
For Xi, the summits will offer a respite from the unrest at home, where growing anger over China’s strict covid restrictions has sparked nationwide protests seen as the biggest serious challenge to the government in decades.
Saudi Arabia has not reported abuses against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, despite condemnation from dozens of European and some Asian countries, adding Turkey, the main Muslim state.
In turn, Chinese officials have not criticized the Saudi government for the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, accepting the official explanation that he was the victim of a rogue operation. And unlike the United States, there are few business-related situations between China and Saudi Arabia. .
“As a trading partner, China has no claims on Saudi Arabia in terms of sovereignty, values and ideology,” said Ma Xiaolin, a foreign affairs specialist at Zhejiang University of International Studies in Hangzhou. “Saudi Arabia trusts China. “
These ties are visible on the streets of Riyadh, as Saudis begin buying Chinese cars and Chinese corporations expand their presence. China also relies on the region for energy and has expanded its maritime presence in the Middle East, a conduit on its Belt and Road. Initiative needed to succeed in trading partners in Europe.
Despite its economic ties to the Middle East, Chinese officials seem keen to take on the kind of strategic defense role the United States has played in the region. Then there’s the sensitive factor of China’s industrial and power ties with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival.
It would be “fantastic” to think that Saudi Arabia could upgrade the United States with China today, said Mohammed Alyahya, a Saudi researcher at Harvard’s Belfer Center and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Still, the region will inevitably react to China’s growing importance and its belief in America’s decline, he said.
“When they see America’s strategic strength fading, for political reasons or because of the worldview of some American politicians, it’s frustrating for Saudi Arabia,” he said. Aliyahya.
“But I think those policymakers would also be foolish if they accepted U. S. threats. UU. de to move away from the region and recalibrate relations with the region to the nominal price, and start thinking soberly about what a Middle East or a post-American global order looks like. “like love. “
How Saudi Arabia and its neighbors believe in this global order, and China’s position in it, will become clear in the coming days. nuclear energy.
“Beyond a certain threshold, it becomes more complicated to negotiate with us if they are too committed in terms of infrastructure and military apparatus to China,” said Colin Kahl, U. S. deputy secretary of defense. A U. S. policy briefing is in the U. S. for politics, to journalists at a briefing in Bahrain. month. ” The more your military and intelligence systems are connected to Beijing, the more direct the challenge will be for our forces here in the region. “
Still, he added, “because the geopolitical landscape is changing, I have the mindset of hedging, or making sure you can hedge all your bets. “
To say Gulf countries are covering themselves up is an “incomplete picture,” said Jonathan Fulton, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. The United States remains paramount to them, China is also essential.
“They do a lot of things with both sides,” he said. They need to keep doing this for as long as they can. “
Vivian Nereim reported from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and David Pierson from Singapore. Edward Wongin Washington and Olivia Wang contributed to this report.
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