China says it wants to cooperate with Gulf nations

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China says it wants to cooperate with Gulf nations

President Xi Jinping of China, fourth from left, met with Gulf leaders in Saudi capital Riyadh on Friday.

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, says he is eager to work with the Middle East, as long-standing U.S. allies, in a series of sensitive fields, including nuclear security and space exploration.

China wants to cooperate with the Gulf Nations on nuclear energy and space, Xi says.

President Xi Jinping said on Friday that China plans to cooperate with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries in the fields of nuclear energy, nuclear security and space exploration, highlighting his nation's ties with a region that was once firmly in the U.S. sphere of influence. Xi was speaking at a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, at a meeting with rulers and officials from the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He held his third and final summit on Friday with other Arab and African leaders. Both China and Saudi Arabia described Mr. Xi's visit this week as a historic moment in a new era of relations between Beijing and the Middle East, a region that once had a mainly oil-based relationship with China, a major consumer of the Gulf's fossil fuel exports. Arab states are increasingly building broader ties with China that extend into arms sales, technology transfers and infrastructure projects. China is building new cities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, selling facial recognition technology to Gulf governments and partnering with them on artificial intelligence research. Beijing has a larger maritime footprint in the region, an important conduit on its Belt and Road Initiative in order to reach trading partners in Europe.

The American intelligence agencies have looked at Saudi efforts, and analysts have raised questions about whether they could develop into capabilities to make weapons-grade fuel, though others say that concerns are inflated or years away. Xi said China wants closer cooperation with the Gulf countries in the fields of space exploration and infrastructure. His country will help the Gulf States train their own astronauts, who will be welcomed on China's space station to work with Chinese astronauts and conduct scientific experiments, he added.

China and the Gulf region are discussing the establishment of a center for moon and deep space exploration, Xi said. Space is an area of particular interest for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 37 year old de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, an avid science fiction fan who set up the kingdom's first space commission in 2018. According to an Arabic translation of a speech by the official Saudi Press Agency, Xi said that he was eager for the Gulf countries to use the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange for the settlement of oil and gas contracts in the Chinese currency. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest exporter of crude oil, which is generally priced in U.S. dollars. Moves away from that could chip away at the dollar's global supremacy, though Saudi Arabia is unlikely to make any major changes as it pegs its own currency to the dollar. Xi signed a strategic partnership with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Thursday. The two sides pledge to continue to support each other's core interests, support each other in maintaining their sovereignty and territorial integrity, and make joint efforts to defend the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states, the two countries said in a joint statement on Friday. Saudi Arabia has been a close ally of the United States for a long time, but its ties to China have been expanding rapidly.