How China's Rise is Changing the Middle East by Anoushiravan Ehteshami Niv Horesh

Author:Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Niv Horesh [Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Niv Horesh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367785710
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

5 Chinese strategic perceptions of Saudi Arabia

Introduction

Since 1993, the year it became a net importer of oil, China’s growing reliance on Middle Eastern crude has gradually made it reassess the significance of its relations with Saudi Arabia. Relations have progressively improved since, overcoming decades of mutual suspicion, cultural barriers, and ill-fated arms deals.1

Yet the weight of historical baggage remained patently evident therein. Notably, although the US had established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1976, and was soon followed by most other Western countries, it took its ally Saudi Arabia another 14 years to follow suit due to decades of extensive collaboration with Taiwan as well as deep-seated antipathy towards the doctrinaire secularism which both Beijing and Moscow embodied in Riyadh’s eyes.2

Saudi Arabia’s interest in building a strong partnership with China can be viewed through the lenses of economic and strategic imperatives. First, China’s thirst for crude oil and Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil exports has made the energy partnership between the two countries akin to a ‘marriage made in heaven’. Second, Riyadh’s fear of Iran’s rising regional influence and its greater presence in Asia and deep links with China encouraged it to cultivate its own ties with China as a counterbalance to Tehran’s voice in Beijing. Third, disenchantment with the United States’ regional policies under the Obama administration, notably support for the Arab Spring and for the Iran nuclear deal, pushed the Kingdom towards cultivating links with other global powers and China in particular as the only rising ‘super star’ on the global stage. Since the signing of the Vienna accords, Riyadh’s overriding strategic imperative of curbing Iranian influence in the region is making it view Beijing in a different light than in the past.3 To that end, the Saudi government approved a greater Chinese role in infrastructural projects within the Kingdom, as well as greater investment by Saudi Aramco in downstream refining facilities in Fujian and Yunnan.4 On its part, Beijing refrained from condemning Riyadh’s military role in suppressing the Houthi rebellion in Yemen despite its professed non-interventionism.5

As Olimat’s study makes clear, Sino-Saudi bilateral relations have since those early days also assumed a budding cross-cultural dimension, with the two countries frequently exchanging business, student, and artist delegations. These have helped narrow the gap between the two vastly different polities – one a nominally socialist People’s Republic, another a devoutly Muslim kingdom.6 China and Saudi Arabia have for example recognized each other’s halal food certification.7

However, in an exhaustive study, Mohammed Turki al-Sudairi has found that residual historical baggage matters. That is to say, popular perceptions of China in Saudi Arabia still tilt towards the negative mainly on religious grounds, the Syrian civil war, and Saudi perceptions of the Iranian threat. These negative perceptions are, according to al-Sudairi, filtered through censorship in the Saudi press so as to avoid antagonizing Beijing.8

While Saudi perceptions of China have received extensive attention, Chinese perceptions of Saudi Arabia remain virtually unexplored in the scholarly literature. This chapter aims to make a singular contribution by plugging part of that gap.

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