Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said at an event alongside Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday that Communist Party dictator Xi Jinping was “expected” to make a visit to the Mideast nation soon, a sign of growing proximity between the two nations amid an increasingly bitter spat between the Saudi royals and the White House.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), considered the de facto ruler of the country, has long fostered close relations with Beijing and emulated some of Xi’s most brutal policies, including mass arrests of high-ranking officials on dubious “corruption” charges. The prince reportedly expressed interest this month in joining the BRICS trade and security bloc, which China largely helped create, consisting of the Asian giant alongside Brazil, India, Russia, and South Africa.
Riyadh has also supported China’s genocide of Muslims, most prominently the majority Uyghur population, of East Turkistan, a move prompting widespread disgust among human rights activists, given Saudi Arabia’s status as the home of the holiest sites in Islam. Individuals protesting China’s Muslim genocide within Mecca, the holiest city in the religion, have faced police action.
In contrast, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the administration of leftist President Joe Biden has deteriorated rapidly in the past year, beginning with an awkward and largely unproductive visit to the country by Biden himself. Reports this month in the Wall Street Journal indicated, citing anonymous rumors, that MBS’s personal distaste for Biden is so great that the president’s visit to Riyadh resulted in MBS decreasing planned oil production increases, the opposite of what Biden reportedly requested of the kingdom.
More recently, Saudi Arabia supporting the OPEC+ oil cartel’s decision to decrease oil production by two million barrels a day has outraged the Biden administration, which responded by accusing Saudi Arabia of wanting to aid Russia in its invasion of Ukraine by increasing its oil profits. Among those expressing confidence in Saudi Arabia’s support of Ukraine, not Russia, following the White House onslaught was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, weakening the impact of White House messaging against the Mideast kingdom.
Xi Jinping did not leave China for more than two years following the eruption of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, China. His first trip abroad since the pandemic began occurred in September, taking him to neighboring Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
“Our meeting today comes at an important time, as it precedes the expected visit of the Chinese president to the kingdom,” the Saudi foreign minister said during his meeting with Wang Yi on Thursday, according to the Emirati newspaper the National. Prince Faisal noted that his discussion with his Chinese counterpart also occurred “before the Saudi-Chinese summit, the Gulf-Chinese summit, and the Arab-Chinese summit, which the Kingdom views with great interest and is working to finalise all arrangements for it, for its success.”
“The historical and solid relationship between our two countries is based on common principles and mutual respect, which contributed to the consolidation of international peace and stability,” Faisal bin Farhan added.
China’s Xinhua News Agency, a government outlet, did not share the prince’s announcement of a forthcoming Xi Jinping visit to Saudi Arabia, instead focusing on Wang’s remarks emphasizing that China prioritizes the relationship with Saudi Arabia.
“Wang said that China attaches great importance to the development of China-Saudi Arabia relations and puts Saudi Arabia at a priority position in China’s overall diplomacy, its diplomacy with the Middle East region in particular,” Xinhua relayed. “China appreciates Saudi Arabia’s adherence to the one-China principle and the country’s long-term and firm support on issues concerning China’s core interests, including those related to Xinjiang, Taiwan, Hong Kong and human rights.”
Xinjiang is the Chinese Communist Party name for East Turkistan, meaning Wang thanked Faisal for supporting the Uyghur genocide.
A Xi visit appears to have been in the works for months. The U.K. newspaper the Guardian predicted that Xi would travel to Saudi Arabia in August, citing anonymous sources in Saudi Arabia, but such a trip never materialized, but the Chinese government, and Xi personally, have made efforts to keep in touch regularly with the Saudis. Crown Prince Mohammed was among the first to send condolences in March to Xi following the crash of a China Eastern Airlines flight that month, and Xi called a month later to discuss their “strategic partnership.”
“The Chinese side supports Saudi Arabia in safeguarding national sovereignty, security and stability, and in independently exploring a development path suited to its own national conditions,” Xi reportedly said in that call.
Saudi Arabia also began the year with a vocal defense of the Uyghur genocide, which the Communist Party claims is a mere “counterterrorism” campaign to eradicate jihadist organizations. The Saudi government, prior to MBS’s arrival in power, was a longtime supporter of Wahhabist jihadism around the world. Prince Faisal, the top diplomat, visited China that month and engaged in an extended meeting with Wang Yi, who claimed that the prince affirmed that “Saudi Arabia upholds justice on the Xinjiang issue and opposes the interference into China’s domestic affairs, which China highly appreciates.”
Last year, Saudi Arabia arrested an American citizen, Setiwaldi Abdukadir, for visiting the holy city of Mecca while wearing a shirt with the words “Pray for the end of China’s genocide & occupation in East Turkistan.”
Saudi Arabia appears to be inching closer to China as it reels from the growing rift between its leaders and President Biden. This month, following a visit to Saudi Arabia by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Ramaphosa said that MBS had personally suggested joining the BRICS coalition, which has resulted in nations with as dramatically ideologically opposed leaders as conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Xi supporting each other on the world stage.
Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia in July appears to have been the starting point of the growing diplomatic disaster. According to the Wall Street Journal, MBS found Biden’s approach to the visit so unpleasant that, rather than increasing oil production by 200,000 barrels a day as Biden had reportedly asked, he slashed that amount in half and supported the two-million-barrel-a-day cut by OPEC+ in October. The Journal also claimed that MBS regularly mocks Biden.
“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s 37-year-old day-to-day ruler, mocks President Biden in private, making fun of the 79-year-old’s gaffes and questioning his mental acuity,” the newspaper alleged, citing “people inside the Saudi government.”
US President Joe Biden (L) meets Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (R) at Alsalam Royal Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on July 15, 2022 (Photo by Royal Court of Saudi Arabia/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images).
The OPEC+ cut prompted the White House to accuse the Saudis of attempting to fund Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to which the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with a long, outraged missive.
“The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would first like to express its total rejection of these statements that are not based on facts, and which are based on portraying the OPEC+ decision out of its purely economic context,” the statement read. “Any attempts to distort the facts about the Kingdom’s position regarding the crisis in Ukraine are unfortunate, and will not change the Kingdom’s principled position, including its vote to support UN resolutions regarding the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.”
The Biden administration has since softened its tone.
“The Saudis supported the important resolutions at the United Nations condemning Russia’s aggression, particularly the resolution that went forward at the General Assembly condemning the purported annexations of Ukrainian territory,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We’ve also seen the Saudis come forward with about $400 million in humanitarian assistance for Ukraine. So these are positive developments.”
“They don’t compensate [for] the decision made by OPEC+ on production, but we take note of that,” he concluded.