MBS shrugs off western fury with Beijing deals
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince is set to sign multibillion-dollar deals in China to cement a relationship between the two powers at the end of an extravagant Asian tour that signals a significant strategic shift by the Gulf kingdom.
Mohammed bin Salman, universally known as MBS, has pledged tens of billions of dollars in investments during a sweep through Pakistan, India and China this week as Saudi Arabia attempts to scale back its dependence on the West.
Five months after the murder of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi damaged relations with some traditional western allies, the prince is looking East, where Asian governments have signalled their willingness to overlook the murder in return for investment and financial support.
He is to meet President Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, and agree to deals that could allow Saudi Arabia to supplant Russia as its biggest oil supplier. His visit to Pakistan was highlighted by a $20 billion (NZ$29b) investment deal intended to bail out its floundering economy, drawing Islamabad deeper into Riyadh’s debt and away from Tehran. MBS then swept into Delhi for a bear hug with Prime Minister Modi, the Indian leader, pressing the country for greater oil sales.
‘‘This is part of the vision to diversify their investments but it also reflects that the Saudis can’t rely on the West right now,’’ said Theodore Karasik, from Gulf State Analytics in Washington. ‘‘They can’t trust the Americans because of the chaos in Washington so they are looking East.’’
American intelligence has concluded the brutal killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul in October was personally ordered by the Crown Prince. In December, MBS ventured out on his first overseas trip since the murder, to Tunisia, but was greeted by protesters waving saws; an allusion to the journalist’s grisly dismemberment. The king of Morocco refused to meet him.
Rumours spread that his ailing father, King Salman, had clipped his wings as a result of the scandal, but the Asian tour suggests that MBS now has total control of the levers of power in Riyadh.
Travelling with him to Beijing are executives from the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, the largest in the world. It is expected to strike deals to invest in two projects in China, building a refinery and petrochemical project in the northeastern province of Liaoning, and formalising a plan to take a minority stake in the privately controlled Zhejiang Petrochemical group.
After his meeting with President Xi, the Crown Prince will depart for Seoul and the final leg of the tour.
‘‘The Saudis understand that the future centres of economic growth lie in the East. China and India will be the drivers of future markets,’’ said Kabir Taneja, from the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi. ‘‘The Khashoggi killing has not been an issue here.’’
The prince arrives in China at a time when the Beijing government faces mounting criticism from Western powers for locking up hundreds of thousands of ethnic Muslims and forcing them to renounce their faith. Saudi Arabia is the selfproclaimed custodian of the holiest sites in Islam, but it is unlikely that the Crown Prince will raise the issue of mass detentions of Muslims in China’s far-west region of Xinjiang.
Rather, the talks are likely to be about trade deals, as the Saudis seek to expand their footprint in Asia and diversify their portfolio of arms suppliers. Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said the two countries had in recent years ‘‘seen a positive momentum in our co-operation with fruitful outcomes in various areas such as infrastructure and space satellites’’.
In America, Congress has moved to blame MBS for the Khashoggi killing, and US technology companies, courted by Riyadh to invest in the kingdom, have distanced themselves. The arrest of several prominent women’s rights campaigners further dented the prince’s image as a reformer.
In Pakistan, too, it has not been plain sailing for the prince, with some voicing unease over the price MBS will eventually demand for his nation’s investment. Pakistan resisted intense pressure from the prince to join his war in Yemen three years ago, but the dire economic straits the country now finds itself in have forced Imran Khan, the prime minister, to abandon the careful line that has been tread between the rival Sunni and Shia Muslim powers of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Riyadh bankrolled Pakistan’s covert nuclear weapons programme from the 1970s onwards. Rumours persist of a deal for Riyadh to acquire, in return, a bomb or nuclear technology from its ally if Iran came close to developing atomic weapons. – The Times