Middle East leadership held up a mirror to the Joe Biden administration last week as Chinese President Xi Jinping was feted in Saudi Arabia and even arch-rival Qatar Emir Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani left the ongoing World Cup soccer festival in Doha to meet with the Center . The Royal Emperor in Riyadh. President Xi Jinping’s four-day visit to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, attended by virtually all Middle Eastern rulers as part of the GCC-Arab summit, sent a message to the US and its allies that China is increasingly an alternative.
pole in an unstable world. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman apparently staged President Xi Jinping’s four-day visit to the oil-rich kingdom as a return to his strained relationship with US President Joe Biden over the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Islamic countries on their side, ask China no questions about the treatment of Sunni Muslims in the restive Xinjiang province. The line-up to meet President Xi Jinping included King Hamad of Bahrain, Emir Sheikh Tamin of Qatar, Fujairah, Ruler of the UAE Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Kuwait Sheikh Meshal Al Sabah and Deputy Prime Minister of Oman Sayyid Fahd Al Said for the summit China -GCC.
Other Middle Eastern leaders who joined the Sino-Arab Summit were: Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El Sisi, Sudanese Sovereign Council Chief General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani. The message from Saudi Arabia was that the world’s largest oil exporter was the leader of the Sunni Muslim world and had the support of the world’s largest oil importer, China, and both were more than willing to take the initiative as a first step toward future military cooperation.
The elaborate show, with all the pomp and gala, was also a signal from Riyadh that Washington was no longer the sole arbiter of the oil-rich Middle East and that China had arrived. While President Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia and red carpet treatment sent shockwaves across Europe and the US, the joining of hands between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his one-time arch-rival Sheikh Tamino was the highlight of the show with MBS attending the World Cup opening and participation in the China-GCC summit.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar in 2017 over links to the Muslim Brotherhood and support for terrorism. Ties were restored at the behest of the US in January 2021. For President Xi Jinping to meet all the important leaders of the Sunni world at once will also strengthen his position, which is seen as beleaguered in his own country.
While the oil trade between Saudi Arabia and China in Yuan is still ongoing, one of the deals involves leading Saudi renewable energy company, Acwa Power, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, China’s largest commercial bank, which is a direct participant in CIPS. the Chinese version of SWIFT, indicating deep financial cooperation between the two authoritarian states. SWIFT is a global system based in Belgium that allows banks to transfer funds in a completely secure way.
The deepening cooperation between the Middle East and China not only has lessons for the US, but given the ongoing military friction between the two neighbors should be of concern to India as well. Increasing China’s footprint in the Indian Ocean will further complicate the situation for India as Beijing expands its Belt Road Initiative into the Middle East without taking the moral high ground on human rights, unlike the US.
