A Near-Normalisation? Sino-Saudi Diplomatic Flirtations between 1955 and 1957

Abstract

The article examines a window of opportunity that emerged between 1955 and 1957 and which could have resulted in the normalisation of Saudi Arabia’s relations with the People’s Republic of China, along with a few other states from the communist bloc. As the article will show, this possibility emerged as a by-product of the Kingdom’s national security challenges during that juncture, and which in turn contributed towards its embrace of a strategy playing both sides of the Cold War divide against one another. This strategy elicited the desired American response which, hand in hand with changing Saudi assessments of regional threats by late 1956, consolidated the American-Saudi security partnership and foreclosed Sino-Saudi normalisation. While the Kingdom had ‘moved on’ by 1957, a reading of open Chinese sources from the late 1950s suggests that Beijing continued to harbour the hope that formal relations could be established.