Saudi Arabia hedges its bet on China to bring more equity in ties with US

As China’s President landed in Riyadh this past week amidst much fanfare, Saudi Arabia announced a bumper budget surplus owing to high oil prices, putting the kingdom forward as the fastest-growing G20 economy, and giving a boost to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) grand plans to re-design the region’s economy for the future. To achieve this, Saudi Arabia is not only going through an economic renaissance but also a geopolitical one as well.
Riyadh’s traditional geopolitical posture has predominantly had a western compass, with close ties between the House of Saud and Washington over decades. Both the internal and external security of Saudi Arabia has been critical for a long time for the United States (US) for its and the West’s energy security. This strategy has had two major parts to it: First, consistent and uninterrupted supply of oil and gas; second, influence over energy pricing, especially with regard to, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)— the producers’ cartel. The former is now challenged by a climate change-pushed global energy transition towards renewables; however, the latter, remains critical with the said transition being politically volatile, as being witnessed currently in Europe on the sidelines of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The other driving aspect of increasing change in posture is an expected coming of great power competition between the US and China, one that countries in the Gulf are looking to sidestep and not get embroiled in. Riyadh’s decision to expand its influence on oil pricing by developing the OPEC+ mechanism, which includes Moscow, has added further layers of tension between the US and the Saudis. During these critical geopolitical moments that are currently unfurling, MBS is looking to implement some of the most drastic political and societal changes in the kingdom’s history. These include opening the economy, attempting to move away from oil, adopting a more moderate take on Islam, and so on. While a widely supported initiative globally, the risks attached to it remain significant, despite a view that the country’s young population backs MBS and his initiatives.

For China, the current squabble between the US and Saudi Arabia is an opportunity. While Beijing would know that Riyadh would in all probability not align fully with its interests, pulling them more towards a central, and “independent” line of thinking would be sufficient. For the US, recent attempts by President Joe Biden to pacify MBS and make attempts to apply a band-aid to the frayed bilateral seem to have not gone according to plan. For Biden, the fact that MBS teamed up with Moscow and cut oil production before the US midterm elections leading to volatile inflation left a bad taste in the mouth. Biden, who had called Saudi a pariah state earlier, and the US being slow institutionally to mount a response when refineries in the country were attacked by drones operated by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, has fallen out of favour with the Crown Prince who believes a Republican White House is more aligned with their interests. The botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 has only added to the anxieties in capitals such as Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

The 2019 attack against the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia is perhaps an underplayed event in how Riyadh calculates security today, and the perception of Beijing being a ‘replacement’ big power in place of the US in the region is an overplayed one. China’s outreach to the Arab states is not a zero-sum game for Xi Jinping. A significant reason behind the depression in US–Saudi ties is the issue of Iran, a country with whom China signed a 25-year-long strategic cooperation partnership in March 2021, which by some estimates is placed at around US$400 billion. This deal, perhaps automatically, to a large extent, nullifies any argument that China is the country that will come to the aid of the Arab world militarily. While there is a palpable feeling of a waning US influence in the region, Washington is still expected to remain a critical external kinetic operator.