Global Courant
The message at an Arab-China business forum hosted by Saudi Arabia this week wasn’t particularly subtle, as hundreds of Chinese officials and executives gathered under giant chandeliers, smiling for selfies and snacking on organic dates.
“If you want a reliable partner in the world – one of the best partners in the world – it’s the People’s Republic of China,” Mohammed Abunayyan, the chairman of a Saudi renewable energy company, declared from the podium to thunderous applause. “China is a partner you can rely on,” he said on Sunday, the first of two days of meetings.
The event, attended by more than 3,000 people, came days after a visit to the kingdom by US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who reaffirmed the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia after a period of strained ties – including an outburst last year about oil production. But at the end of Mr Blinken’s visit on Thursday, the Saudi foreign minister said that while the kingdom values its close relationship with the United States, it has no plans to distance itself from China, its main trading partner.
Saudi officials often complain that they feel they cannot rely on the United States, its historic security guarantor, and that they are trying to forge a more independent foreign policy.
“We are reaching out to everyone, and anyone who wants to come and invest with us is more than welcome,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the energy minister and a brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler, said at the forum. . on Sunday.
When asked how he reacted to criticism from some corners of growing ties between Saudi Arabia and China, Prince Abdulaziz replied: “I’m ignoring it completely.”
“There’s nothing like a so-called grand design between us and China,” he said. “However, I have to say it plainly and bluntly: We work with them on so many things.”
This was the 10th Arab-Chinese business conference, but the first time hosted by Saudi Arabia, and by far the biggest repeat of the event. Deals announced at the forum include pacts for Chinese companies to invest in copper mining and renewable energy in the kingdom, as well as a $5.6 billion agreement between the Saudi Ministry of Investment and a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer to launch a $5.6 billion deal. establish a joint venture for research, production and sales.
Among the Chinese companies invited were several that have been placed on US government blacklists over allegations that their activities contribute to the surveillance of Chinese ethnic minorities, limiting their ability to do business with US companies.
These include SenseTime – an artificial intelligence company specializing in facial recognition – and BGI Group, a genomics company. The US Department of Defense also last year classified a BGI Group component as one of “Chinese military companies operating in the United States,” though BGI says the technology was developed for civilian purposes.
Both firms deny the allegations behind their blacklisting, and on the forum they spoke warmly about their business relationships with the Saudi government, including for BGI Group setting up laboratories in the kingdom during the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite official claims to the contrary, many Saudis can’t help but frame their growing ties to China in contrast to the United States’ dwindling influence in the kingdom.
During the 2019 campaign trail, President Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state over human rights abuses, including the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – a Saudi exile critical of Prince Mohammed – by Saudi Arabian agents in 2018. year, Mr Biden visited the crown prince and shared a fist with him.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, received much grander reception when he visited Saudi Arabia in December. His visit heralded a “new era of cooperation” between Arab countries and China, said Hu Chunhua, the vice chairman of China’s People’s Political Consultative Conference, one of the keynote speakers at the business forum this week.
Saudis are quick to point out that they do not believe China can replace the US as their security guarantor, even as the economic relationship between Saudi and China grows. Cultural ties between the two countries are also emerging; very few Saudis speak Chinese compared to English.
Still, officials are eager to change that, with plans to teach Chinese in schools. In the newest terminals at Riyadh airport, directional signs are not only Arabic and English, but also Chinese.
In China, Prince Mohammed sees an ally willing to share technology – crucial to his efforts to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy and build production in the kingdom. Several speakers at the conference compared the economic changes Saudi Arabia is going through under Prince Mohammed with the transformation China went through a few decades ago.
“Something big happens in human history every 20 or 30 years, and the last big economic thing to happen was perhaps the opening of China,” says Ronnie Chan, a real estate developer in Hong Kong. “Today I am witnessing something in the kingdom that reminded me of what happened in China 30 or 40 years ago.”
