Riyadh, Saudi Arabia —Â Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for a three-day visit, his first to the world’s biggest crude oil exporter since 2016, Saudi state media reported on Tuesday.
The visit will include a bilateral summit chaired by Saudi King Salman and attended by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
Xi, head of the world’s second biggest economy, will also attend a summit with rulers from the Gulf Cooperation Council and talks convening leaders from elsewhere in the Middle East, the state news agency said.
China is Saudi Arabia’s biggest customer for crude oil, purchasing roughly a quarter of Saudi oil exports.
Beyond energy, analysts say leaders from the two countries are expected to discuss potential deals that could see Chinese firms become more deeply involved in mega-projects that are central to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vision of diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil.
Those projects include a futuristic $500 billion megacity known as NEOM, a so-called cognitive city that will depend heavily on facial recognition and surveillance technology.
Xi last visited Saudi Arabia in 2016, the year before Prince Mohammed became first in line to the throne, on a trip that also featured stops in Egypt and Saudi rival Iran.
Mohammed bin Salman visited China and met Xi on an Asia tour in 2019.
In recent years, Gulf Arab states have stepped up their relations with China and Russia as regional scepticism about the region’s relationship with the United States, a vital security ally, has grown.
When it comes to their ties with Russia, another member of the OPEC+ oil production alliance, and China, a significant trading partner, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have defied American pressure to “choose sides.”
The decision by OPEC+ to decrease output in October in defiance of US concerns infuriated the US, further deteriorating long-standing ties with Saudi Arabia that US president Joe Biden had attempted to fix during a difficult visit to the kingdom in July.
(With agency inputs)