Changing focus while maintaining balance: Strategic adjustments behind the developing Sino-Saudi relations

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the major drivers, constraints, and prospects for the rapidly growing Sino-Saudi relations, and argues that such a development should be deemed as the embodiment of the strategy of ‘changing the focus while keeping the balance’ that both Beijing and Riyadh have been implementing in years. While maintaining friendly gestures towards all Arab states, President Xi Jinping’s 2022 visit to Saudi Arabia demonstrates that Beijing has shifted its focus on the Arab world away from the Mediterranean to the Gulf region, both economically and politically. On the other hand, as Riyadh’s rapprochement with the Biden administration has been slow to make significant progress, Saudi Arabia has also accelerated its pace of ‘looking east’ while cautiously keeping traditional ties with the West. A robust, stable, and preferably more transparent relationship between China and Saudi Arabia might help mitigate the potential for direct Sino-US confrontation and Gulf tensions, benefiting not only the Middle East and the Mediterranean region but, against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, more economies at both ends of Eurasia.