China’s Xi Jinping is going to visit Saudi Arabia in historic visits. It’s a summit between China and nearly all Arab nations which is going to take place on Friday. In fact it shows that west Asia had found an alternative to the United States.
President Xi Jinping is to get the most prestigious red carpet welcome by Saudi government like they did for President Joe Biden in last June. The question is why Xi Jinping is being honored Saudi Arabia in such grand way despite of several threats by the US. The reasons are simple, Chiana’s trade relationship with Saudi Arabia alone is worth 87.3 billion as of 2021 which show 39% increase from 2020, meaning China-Saudi ties up growing and they are growing very fast. Chinese export to Saudi Arabia reached 30.3 billion USD last year while China’s imports from the Kingdom totaled 57 billion USD. Saudi Arabia is China’s top oil supplier making 18% of China’s total oil purchases. In just first 10 months of 2022, China bought Saudi oil worth 55.5 billion USD. On the contrary, the total trade between Saudi-US had decreased surprisingly from some 76 billion USD in 2012 to 29 billion USD in 2021, it surely is a massive drop! While shrinking trade volume with US, Saudi is increasing trade with China, India and even with Japan. These shows that US had lost their importance to Saudi Arabia. Other reason was that US had been accusing Bin Salman for murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi and labeled the country a ‘Pariah State’ and furthermore US had halted some arms deal with Saudia. All these incidents have significant effect on the current cold relations within US and Saudi and there is China’s Jinping are welcomed like the alternative of US.
Comment here