Xi’s Saudi visit more spectacle than substance

By Swaran Singh

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent three-day visit to Saudi Arabia has triggered speculations that must be put in perspective when evaluating its likely outcome.

In the midst of fluctuations in global energy markets driven by the Ukraine war, Xi’s visit made headlines in terms of world’s largest oil exporter (Saudi Arabia) and largest oil importer (China) signing 34 deals worth US$29.6 billion.

These present a roadmap of China ensuring reliable energy supplies in lieu of investments and technology transfers in green energy, information technology, cloud services, transport, construction. etc.

Some of the more noticeable among these include China setting up a Huawei cloud-computing region, building an electric-vehicle factory, and supplying hydrogen batteries for Saudi Arabia’s much-hyped futuristic city of Neom.

Reports also focused on King Salman and President Xi signing a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement institutionalizing a biannual apex-level meeting to provide strategic direction to their relations.

More serious analysis has seen Xi’s visit as a game-changing event in the backdrop of strained Saudi-American relations. These have witnessed occasional public mudslinging following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and more recently in Riyadh defying US dictates for delaying its downsizing of oil production.

Pomp and ceremony

Xi’s visit has been compared with a rather low-key July visit by US President Joe Biden where he was televised unsmiling, squirming, and bumping fists with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Comparisons are also made with the 2017 no-frills visit of then-president Donald Trump. These make Xi’s reception by King Salman and MBS seem a high-octane regional event of significance.

Until just about two decades back Chinese leaders were unwelcome in Riyadh. The trick lies in transformation of their economic relations. Last year, 18% of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports, worth $18 billon, went to China. The two countries’ growing proximity is reflected in their bilateral trade that, in the face of pandemic-driven economic decelerations and disruptions, reached $87.3 billion for 2021, marking a 30% rise over the previous year.

President Xi’s plane was escorted by four Royal Saudi Air Force fighter jets as it entered Saudi airspace, and was then escorted by six aerobatic jets dragging green smoke trails while Xi’s flight landed at King Khalid International Airport.

Later, after a red-carpet welcome led by the Saudi foreign minister and governor of Riyadh on the tarmac, with cannons firing his welcome, Xi’s car was escorted by Saudi Royal Guards riding Arabian horses carrying Chinese and Saudi flags on the way to the king’s Al Yamamah Palace, where he was received by MBS.

The indulgences from China were no less. Xi opened his first day with a signed op-ed in Saudi media calling his visit a “pioneering trip” to “open a new era of China’s relations with the Arab World, the Arab countries of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia,” especially underlining how China and Saudi Arabia “continue to hold high the banner of non-interference in internal affairs.” Without doubt, the message for the United States was loud and clear.

The spectacle continued over multiple traditional sword dances and lavish receptions as President Xi addressed the first China-Arab States Summit as well as Gulf Cooperation Council leaders. Here Xi again repeated the same camaraderie, promising to make the summit a “milestone event in the history of China-Arab relations” and underlining how he saw Riyadh as “an important force in the multipolar world.”

It is important to remember that Saudi Arabia is the only Arab nation in the Group of Twenty. It is the largest economy of this region, accounting for more than 27% of the total GDP of Arab League nations put together, next being the United Arab Emirates that stands at half its size.

Arms and energy

One report shows China and Saudi Arabia as the second- and third-largest defense spenders, which draws attention to their possible defense cooperation. The fact that recent times have seen the Saudi kingdom’s relations with the United States – its main security guarantor and arms supplier – hitting a nadir reinforces possibilities of China-Saudi Arabia defense cooperation.

The discomfiture of Saudi Arabia with the United States goes back to then-president Barack Obama’s negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, where Washington had sidelined its Arabian allies by involving its European allies in those negotiations. Signing of that deal in 2015 alienated the Arabian kingdoms.

Others take it even further back to the 2008 shale-gas revolution making the United States far less dependent on Gulf oil, resulting it gradual downsizing of its military presence in the region.

More recently, they have gone further adrift after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and its recent preoccupation with Ukraine.

The recent period has also seen US leaders becoming vocal about the human-rights records of Arab leaders, triggering Arab narratives of a post-American Middle East. This has sent Arab leaders exploring diversification toward Russia and China.

Instead of devising alternative strategies, successive US administrations have continued taking cudgels, which have been counterproductive especially in face of increasing indulgences from China while Russia is at war.

An apt example of this was current president Joe Biden’s administration threatening to cancel the UAE’s deal for F-35 jet fighters if it went ahead with its 5G deal with China’s Huawei, which the latter did nevertheless.

And now, in the face of US attempts to browbeat Arab leaders and to defame China’s Huawei for espionage and data and technology theft, most Gulf countries have signed partnerships with it for building their fifth-generation telecom networks.

Does it mean China’s seamlessly moving from trade to investments to technology transfers to defense cooperation with Arab nations? Certainly both the Arabian states and China have their reasons to come closer. And just as surely, the United States’ strategies have pushed them closer.

But core interests that guide their partnership augur different outcomes. For China, Saudi oil accounts for more than one-fourth of its total oil imports. And, as world’s largest importer of oil, the first priority for China is to ensure reliable supplies from Saudi Arabia, which are the lifeline for China’s dwindling economic growth and development.

In the face of China’s other suppliers, Iran and Russia, facing American ire, Beijing would not rock the boat by making its engagement with Arab states part of its confrontation with the United States.

Likewise, China’s investments and technology transfers remain critical for Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 that seeks economic diversification, digital transformations and especially build its futuristic city of Neom – the brainchild of MBS.

For MBS, this hosting of Gulf leaders and Xi was more likely guided by his search for legitimacy as a regional leader. Saudi Arabia also must explore opportunities beyond selling crude oil. Saudi energy giants like Aramco want to expand their downstream investments across Asia and explore partnerships with Chinese into hydrogen and other renewables.

Instead of Chinese soldiers, Saudi Arabia will want to attract Chinese tourists to its resorts on the Red Sea beaches. This will enhance both credibility and development opportunities for the Saudi kingdom.

Saudi Arabia was a unique beneficiary in the late 1980s to receive a one-off deal of nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missiles from China.

And lately, Beijing has favored Riyadh developing its indigenous ballistic missiles, and the United States is aware that Riyadh finds China easier to work with as Beijing does not raise any questions about human rights or place any stringent end-user conditions on its technology transfers. Yet their defense cooperation will remain a far-off priority, if at all.

At best, President Xi and MBS may be tempted to project their proximity and likely defense cooperation in terms of building their respective leverage against their difficult relations with the United States.

But in reality, while China-Saudi Arabia commercial relations will soar high, Beijing is nowhere close to developing any serious defense cooperation with Riyadh, leave alone replacing the United States as Saudi Arabia’s security guarantor and main supplier of defense equipment, training, parts etc.

Arab nations see China only as an emerging economic partner. It also shows some promise of becoming a source of technology transfers. But in spite of China’s increasing military modernization and naval presence from Djbouti to Solomon Islands, its outreach remains limited to scientific surveys and anti-piracy patrolling operations.

It shows no wherewithal, even potentially, to deliver massive, decisive, timely military interventions beyond its own borders. But even so, the rapid drift in China’s engagement with the Arab world certainly calls for better calibration, if not course correction, by the United States.

The author is visiting professor at the University of British Columbia and professor of diplomacy and disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is president of the Association of Asia Scholars; adjunct senior fellow at the Charhar Institute, Beijing; senior fellow, Institute for National Security Studies Sri Lanka, Colombo; and visiting professor, Research Institute for Indian Ocean Economies, Kunming. More by Swaran Singh

Aditi Bhaduri

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