Saudi Arabia said Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit the kingdom from Wednesday for a summit that will showcase growing ties.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will take part in a Saudi-Chinese summit during Xi’s Dec. 7-9 visit, the kingdom’s SPA state news agency said Tuesday.
This will be Xi’s third trip abroad since the coronavirus pandemic began and his first to Saudi Arabia since 2016, the year before Prince Mohammed became first in line to the throne.
Xi, head of the world’s second largest conomy, will also attend a summit with rulers from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and talks with leaders from elsewhere in the Middle East, strengthening China’s growing ties with the region
The visit coincides with heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States over issues ranging from energy policy to regional security and human rights.
The latest blow to that decades-old partnership came in October when the OPEC+ oil bloc agreed to cut production by two million barrels a day, a move the White House said amounted to “aligning with Russia” on the war in Ukraine.
On Sunday, OPEC+ opted to keep those cuts in place.
In 2019, Prince Mohammed visited China and met with Xi on an Asia tour.
This year, Prince Mohammed has already welcomed Britain’s then-prime minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden, who greeted the crown prince with a fist bump in Jeddah, reversing a 2019 pledge to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah”.
China purchases roughly a quarter of Saudi oil exports.
Ifunanya Ikueze is an Engineer, Safety Professional, Writer, Investor, Entrepreneur and Educator.
