Global Courant
Saudi Arabia is seeking stronger cooperation with China on trade investment and energy flows rather than competing with the superpower, said Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
“We started to recognize the reality today that China is leading, had taken and will continue to take that lead. We don’t have to compete with China, we have to work with China,” he told CNBC’s Dan Murphy during the Arab- Chinese trade conference on Sunday.
He added that there is value in working with China as they have taken the lead in finding the “right manufacturers”, especially in renewable energy. “We will never go to this zero-sum game again.”
When asked why the OPEC spinner is looking at China, Abdulaziz said he believes China’s oil demand is still growing, and it’s a pie Saudi Arabia is eager to take.
China is the world’s largest importer of crude oil and the Saudis have pushed ahead as China’s main supplier of the product in April despite Russia’s cheap sanctioned oil.
In March, state-owned Saudi Aramco announced two major refinery deals, supplying 690,000 barrels of crude oil per day to Rongsheng Petrochemical and Zhejiang Petrochemical. The deals came shortly after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the kingdom last December.
“This does not mean that we will not cooperate with others,” the minister also said on Sunday, citing Europe, South Korea, Japan, the US and Latin America as parties with which the country has trade ties.
The conference in Riyadh took place against the backdrop of growing economic and diplomatic ties between China and Saudi Arabia, as both enter into increasingly strained relations with the West.
The Saudi cabinet in March approved a decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Chinese-led security bloc that lists Russia, India, Pakistan and four other Central Asian countries as full members.
When asked if skeptics were critical of growing Saudi-China ties, Abdulaziz replied, “I’m ignoring it completely.”
He likened business transactions to a pot that didn’t need to be divided among countries, saying Saudi Arabia “will go where the opportunity presents itself”. “There’s nothing political about it. There’s nothing strategic about it.”
“We are Saudi Arabia, we don’t need to engage in what I call a zero-sum game. We believe there are so many global opportunities.”
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