RIYADH — Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for a three-day go to, his first to the world’s greatest crude oil exporter since 2016, Saudi state media reported on Tuesday.
The go to will embody a bilateral summit chaired by Saudi King Salman and attended by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the dominion’s de facto ruler, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
Xi, head of the world’s second greatest financial system, may also attend a summit with rulers from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and talks convening leaders from elsewhere within the Middle East, the state news company mentioned.
The Chinese chief’s arrival coincides with heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States over points starting from vitality coverage to regional safety and human rights.
The newest blow to that decades-old partnership got here in October when the OPEC+ oil bloc agreed to chop manufacturing by two million barrels a day, a transfer the White House mentioned amounted to “aligning with Russia” on the struggle in Ukraine.
On Sunday, OPEC+ opted to maintain these cuts in place.
China is Saudi Arabia’s greatest buyer for crude oil, buying roughly 1 / 4 of Saudi oil exports.
Beyond vitality, analysts say leaders from the 2 nations are anticipated to debate potential offers that would see Chinese companies turn out to be extra deeply concerned in mega-projects which are central to Prince Mohammed’s imaginative and prescient of diversifying the Saudi financial system away from oil.
Those initiatives embody a futuristic $500 billion megacity often called NEOM, a so-called cognitive metropolis that can rely closely on facial recognition and surveillance know-how.
Xi final visited Saudi Arabia in 2016, the yr earlier than Prince Mohammed grew to become first in line to the throne, on a visit that additionally featured stops in Egypt and Saudi rival Iran.
Prince Mohammed visited China and met with Xi on an Asia tour in 2019. — Agence France-Presse
