RIYADH —
Chinese President Xi Jinping will make a three-day
visit to Saudi Arabia this week, meeting the king and crown prince of the
world’s biggest oil exporter.
اضافة اعلان
The Chinese leader will arrive on Wednesday, the
official Saudi Press Agency said, for only his third trip abroad since the
COVID-19 pandemic began and his first to Saudi Arabia since 2016.
Xi, head of the world’s number-two economy, will
also attend a summit with rulers from the six-member GCC and talks with leaders
from elsewhere in the Middle East, strengthening China’s growing ties with the
region.
His bilateral summit, chaired by King Salman and
attended by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman comes after Xi secured a historic
third term in November.
Xi’s visit reflects “much deeper relations developed
in recent years” between the two countries, said Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst
close to the government.
“As the largest importer of
Saudi oil, China is a
critically important partner and military relations have been developing
strongly,” he said, adding that he expected “a number of agreements to be
signed”.
The visit also coincides with heightened tensions
between Saudi Arabia and the US over issues ranging from energy policy to
regional security and human rights.
The latest blow to that decades-old partnership came
in October when the OPEC+ oil bloc agreed to cut production by 2 million
barrels a day, a move the White House said amounted to “aligning with Russia”
on the war in Ukraine.
On Sunday,
OPEC+ opted to keep those cuts in place.
Shihabi said the timing was “a coincidence and not
directed at US”.
Xi last visited Saudi Arabia in 2016, the year
before Prince Mohammed became first in line to the throne, on a trip that also
featured stops in Egypt and Saudi rival Iran.
Prince Mohammed visited China and met with Xi on an
Asia tour in 2019, the year before the pandemic took hold.
This year, Prince Mohammed has already welcomed
Britain’s then-prime minister Boris Johnson, French President
Emmanuel Macron,
and US President Joe Biden, who greeted the crown prince with a fist bump in
Jeddah, reversing a 2019 pledge to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah”.
China purchases roughly a quarter of Saudi oil
exports.
The oil market was thrown into turmoil with Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine in February.
The G7 and EU on Friday agreed a $60-per-barrel
price cap on Russian oil in an attempt to deny the Kremlin revenues to keep up
the war, stoking further uncertainty.
“Oil will probably be higher up the agenda than it
was when Biden visited,” said Torbjorn Soltvedt of the risk intelligence firm
Verisk Maplecroft.
“These are the two most important players in the oil
market — Saudi on the supply side, and then China on the demand side.”
There is potential for the two sides to ramp up
cooperation in developing infrastructure like refineries.
Beyond energy, analysts say leaders from the two
countries are expected to discuss potential deals that could see Chinese firms
become more deeply involved in mega-projects that are central to Prince Mohammed’s
vision of diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil.
Those projects include a futuristic $500 billion
megacity known as NEOM, a so-called cognitive city that will depend heavily on
facial recognition and surveillance technology.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
