China, Saudi Arabia Upgrade Ties With Strategic Partnership Deal

December 9, 2022
Top of the Agenda
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud signed an agreement (Al Jazeera) to upgrade their countries’ relationship and pledged to cooperate in the global oil market. Another deal will allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to provide cloud computing (Bloomberg) and other services in Saudi Arabia. The deals come as both countries navigate strains in their relationships with the United States. The leaders also announced that they will now hold summits every two years.

 

China’s foreign ministry described Xi’s three-day visit to Saudi Arabia as the “largest-scale diplomatic activity between China and the Arab world” in modern Chinese history. To wrap up the visit, Xi is attending a summit (Reuters) with Arab leaders today. 
Analysis
“It’s clear that the Chinese are trying to expand their reach [in the Middle East] beyond trade into politics and into security,” Princeton University’s Bernard Haykel tells Al-Monitor.

 

“Missing from the leaders’ public statements was any mention of the more controversial aspects of a relationship that have raised the hackles of U.S. officials—such as advanced military sales, expansion of 5G and 6G telecommunications networks and pricing some Saudi oil sales in yuan, which accelerated this year,” the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Kalin writes.

For Foreign Affairs, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Michael Singh discusses what China-Saudi Arabia relations say about the Middle East in a multipolar era.