Three summits in a summit: China is penetrating the Arab world on a silk carpet

Rashid Khashana – America does not look favorably on the Chinese rapprochement with its ally, Saudi Arabia, but it does not want to open a crisis with Riyadh in the current circumstance.

When the visitor arrives at the entrance to the deep-water port of Cherchell (western Algeria), he notices a large plaque on which is written between the Algerian and Chinese flags, the phrase: “The bond of friendship always brings us together… Together we achieve the Silk Road” in Arabic, Chinese, and French. The completion of this giant project, which competes with the Moroccan port of Tangier, indicates the importance of the role that China is playing in Algeria, the largest Maghreb country, as it has displaced France from the position of the Algerians’ first economic partner. The Cherchell port project, whose cost is estimated at six billion dollars, will be completed next year, and is considered the largest in the Mediterranean and the fifth largest in the world.
With the rapid development of bilateral relations, Algeria joined the Chinese Silk Road and the strategic projects it included. In parallel, the invasion of Chinese products into Algeria and neighboring countries has worsened, becoming the main source of supply for the parallel Maghreb markets, destroying European goods, which are unable to compete with low-priced products that suit the capabilities of the poor and even middle classes. On the other hand, China needs to attract energy investments, traditional, unconventional, and renewable energy, and it finds such financing in the Gulf countries.

The largest consumer of oil
Against this background, the Chinese presence continues to expand and expand throughout the Arab world, granting aid and soft loans, and building economic, political and military partnerships with the countries of the region, at the expense of Western traditional powers. Hence, the Saudis were able to merge three summits into one, between the seventh and ninth of this month, the first a bilateral Saudi-Chinese summit, the second an Arab-Chinese summit, and the third a Gulf-Chinese summit. The “First Arab-Chinese Summit for Cooperation and Development” came to add a political and strategic dimension to the economic relations between Beijing and the Arab world. The Saudi initiative to hold the three summits in Riyadh is due to the extent of the deep economic ties between them, as China is considered the largest consumer of Saudi oil.
The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco), one of the largest international companies in the field of energy, and the Chinese Shandong Energy Group announced that they are exploring opportunities for cooperation in the field of refining and petrochemical industries in China. The two companies signed two memorandums of understanding, the first of which includes an agreement to supply crude oil, and a second agreement to purchase chemical products, which strengthens the role of Saudi Aramco in building a thriving refining and petrochemical sector in the Chinese province of Shandong. The scope of the MoU extends to cooperation across technologies related to hydrogen, renewable energy sources, and carbon capture and storage.

New positioning

Through Aramco, the Saudis seek to position themselves deep within the Chinese energy sector, in order to create new paths for growth, in a country that leads the increasing integration of refining and petrochemical operations and exploration of renewable energy sources, which are key areas that “will shape the common future of the sector,” according to Mohammed Al-Qahtani, Vice President of “Aramco.” Aramco. This agreement strengthens the Saudi company’s efforts to meet Chinese demands for energy, petrochemicals and non-metallic materials, as it seeks to expand its capacity in the field of converting liquids into chemicals to reach 4 million barrels per day by 2030. More than that, the Saudi-Chinese summit and the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Riyadh is an opportunity to sign a strategic partnership for cooperation in the areas of the digital economy. At the summit, the Chinese expressed their desire for investments to flow primarily from Saudi Arabia and Algeria, to develop the Chinese oil industry.
The intensity of mutual visits between the leaders of China and Saudi Arabia in recent years indicates the importance that each party attaches to relations with the other, as Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia in January 2016 before King Salman visited China in March 2017. Few visits abroad. Perhaps the most important visit was the visit made by Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman to China in February 2019, as it paved the way for reaching the current strategic partnership agreement. But the funny thing is that Saudi Arabia mentioned that the Chinese Communist Party is fine in the joint statement, issued in the wake of the Saudi-Chinese summit, in which it was stated that the Saudi side “congratulated China on the success of the twentieth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,” which is a new position from a political system that rejects party pluralism, especially since the matter It relates to a party that embraces communism.

Morocco is a focal point?

At the third session of the China-Arab Forum last September, China promised to develop strong, green and lasting cooperation with the Arab world as a vital field that accommodates its economic and strategic expansion. In North Africa in particular, the Chinese hope that Morocco will constitute a pivotal starting point for achieving the goals of the “Belt and Road” initiative launched by the Chinese President in 2013 in the Maghreb region. On the occasion of the visit of King Mohammed VI to Beijing in 2016, the comprehensive strategic partnership was signed between the two countries, which constituted a new station in the path of bilateral relations.
The Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the New Silk Road, or the Silk Road for the Twenty-First Century, is based on pumping huge investments to develop the infrastructure of global economic corridors, with the aim of linking more than seventy countries together. The Chinese President launched this initiative in 2013, which aims to create a land belt of railways and roads across Central Asia and Russia, in addition to a sea route that allows China to reach Africa and Europe, at a total cost of one trillion dollars. In other words, China, which is described as the world’s factory, will benefit from this achievement in liquefying the roads leading to global markets, and by extension enhancing the access of its exports to various countries of the world.

BRICS countries

The 2017 agreement between Morocco and China also stipulates a pledge by major Chinese companies to invest in Morocco, especially in the automobile industry, aviation, high technology, infrastructure, e-commerce, agricultural industry, and textiles. There is no doubt that America does not look favorably on the Chinese rapprochement with its ally, Saudi Arabia, but Washington also does not want to open a crisis with Riyadh in the current circumstance, because the economic aspect is dominant in the results of the three summits hosted by Saudi Arabia, and because the open files with Russia, Iran and other countries Others do not provide the Americans with the appropriate climate to conduct an inventory of accounts with Beijing. Moreover, it seemed as if the Americans were upset by the Saudis’ desire to join the BRICS grouping, which includes rising industrial powers, including China, India, and Brazil.
The other Arab country that has applied to join the BRICS group is Algeria, which enjoys full support from China, which indicates the trend towards the formation of a new multipolar world order, which is an important element that requires building strategic partnerships between the countries concerned here and there. It is noteworthy that the Arabs, despite the advanced level of Arab-Chinese cooperation, are still seeking a greater and deeper understanding of the unique Chinese phenomenon, following the example of Moroccan researcher Dr. Nizar Lafrawi, a journalist with the Maghreb Arab Press, who issued a book entitled “China… Leadership of the Century.” His compatriot, the poet Abdul Hamid Jamahiri, also recently published a new book about his visits to China, entitled “We Went to China and Returned from the Future.” The Arab future will certainly not be in line with the Chinese future, which has achieved light years of growth since the departure of President Mao Zedong and the leader of reformers, Teng Hsiu-ping, who set signs of transition to a market economy. Perhaps more important than investments and oil deals is that the Arabs take from the Chinese their mentality and pragmatism, especially their reverence for work.

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