Riyadh: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Riyadh, in an effort to strengthen relations between the two countries at a time when relations with Saudi’s ties with USA are tense.
According to a report by the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, the visit is scheduled to take place in May, after the end of the holy month of Ramzan.
If the visit takes place, it will be the first trip by a Chinese president outside the country, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
It is reported that, Riyadh plans to receive the Chinese president with a similar hospitality that it gave to former President Donald Trump in 2017, when he visited the Kingdom on his first trip abroad.
“The Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Xi are good friends and both of them realize the great opportunity to strengthen relations, and that it It is not just that they buy oil from us and we buy weapons from them,” the WSJ quoted a Saudi official.
China is the first global importer of oil and the largest economic partner of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
It is noteworthy that since Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the long-standing strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia and Washington has come under pressure over Riyadh’s human rights record, particularly regarding the Yemeni war and the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
For his part, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince has said, in an interview in The Atlantic, that he simply doesn’t care whether Joe Biden misunderstood things about him.
