Sino-Saudi trade has steadily increased since they established relations in 1990, with China buying up 27% of Saudi oil exports last year. At the end of 2021, annual bilateral trade amounted to $87.31 billion. Between January and August 2022, Saudi Aramco delivered an average of 1.76 million barrels per day of petroleum to China.
Xi’s prospective trip would come after his visit to Bali, Indonesia, for the Group of 20 summit next week - one of his first trips abroad since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. He is also expected to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok, Thailand, immediately after, and to meet face-to-face with Biden at one of the two events.
The Saudis “aren’t trying to play one off the other so much as really trying to deepen what they’re getting out of both sides,” he said. “The US has this binary right now, where it’s strategic competition: work with us or work with China. But most actors in the Gulf don’t seem to see it that way.”
Especially since Biden announced a boycott of Russian energy products in March 2022, the Saudis have refused to cooperate with US requests to increase petroleum production and bring down oil prices. Recently, when the OPEC petroleum cartel announced it would cut production instead of expanding it, the White House described the decision as “short-sighted” and “misguided” and that it might begin withdrawing some US forces from the kingdom, stationed there as a defense against Iran and the Yemeni Houthis.