What’s new: President Xi Jinping will pay a four-day state visit to Saudi Arabia starting Wednesday, during which he will attend the first China-Arab States Summit and a meeting of the China-Gulf Cooperation Council in the capital Riyadh, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
The visit, Xi’s first to the world’s biggest crude oil exporter since 2016, is at the invitation of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a statement Wednesday.
“The two summits will discuss ways to enhance joint relations in all fields, and discuss prospects for economic and development cooperation,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Twitter Tuesday.
The background: Beijing is looking to deepen ties with countries in the Middle East where it can challenge the U.S. while securing economic opportunities.
Reports appeared in March that China and Saudi Arabia were again in talks to settle oil deals in yuan, a change that would undercut the dollar, which has long been the default currency for pricing energy contracts around the world.
Saudi Arabia was China’s largest source of foreign oil ahead of Russia in October, according to customs data from the world’s second-largest economy.
Relations between China and the U.S. have worsened this year following events such as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August over China’s strong objections and Washington’s sweeping restrictions on semiconductor exports to the Asian nation.
Bloomberg contributed to the story.
Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Jonathan Breen (jonathanbreen@caixin.com)
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