The10th Arab-China Business Conference, held June 11-12 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, drew more than 2,000 participants, and signified the shift of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries towards business and economic growth with China — as U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken impotently flails his arms. Hosted in Saudi Arabia for the first time and organized by the Ministry of Investment of Saudi Arabia (MISA), the conference was held in partnership with the General Secretariat of the League of Arab States, the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and the Union of Arab Chambers.
It followed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s epoch-making meetings March 6-10 in Beijing with Saudi and Iranian representatives, resulting in the process of normalization of Saudi and Iranian relations, bridging the Sunni-Shia divide. Then on March 29, 2023, Saudi Arabia’s cabinet approved a memorandum on granting the kingdom the status of a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In the last week of May, Saudi Arabia held talks to join the New Development Bank as its ninth member, according to the BRICS Information Portal.
Notably, in 2022, trade between Arab countries and China surged to a substantial $430 billion, a 31% jump over 2021’s level. Of that amount, Saudi-China trade represented $106 billion. Earlier this year, China agreed to build a steel plant in Saudi Arabia, something that the United States and Britain had never deigned to do. In the last two days, 30 trade deals, worth $10 billion, have signed at the Riyadh conference, but that is just the beginning. Among the highlights:
A $5.6 billion agreement between the Saudi’s Investment Ministry and Human Horizons, a Chinese developer of autonomous-car driving technologies and manufacturer of electric cars under the HiPhi brand, to establish a joint venture for automotive research, development, manufacturing, and sales
