{"id":4904,"date":"2017-03-18T04:08:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T04:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=4904"},"modified":"2017-03-17T16:12:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T16:12:30","slug":"china-and-saudi-arabia-sign-deals-worth-65-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/china-and-saudi-arabia-sign-deals-worth-65-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"China and Saudi Arabia sign deals worth $65 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Energy cooperation remains the foundation of relations between Saudi Arabia, the world\u2019s top oil exporter, and China, the world\u2019s biggest importer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Salman bin Abdulaziz have agreed to step up cooperation in diverse areas to push forward their all-round strategic partnership.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The two leaders oversaw the signing of up to $65 billion worth of economic and trade deals spanning sectors from energy to space, according to Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Ming.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Saudi Arabia and China also deepened their energy relationship with more than 20 agreements on oil investments and in renewable energy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The deals included a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between giant state oil firm <a href=\"http:\/\/www.saudiaramco.com\/en\/home.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #993300;\">Saudi Aramc<\/span>o<\/a> and <span style=\"color: #993300;\"><a style=\"color: #993300;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.norincogroup.com.cn\/\" target=\"_blank\">China North Industries Group Corp<\/a><\/span> (Norinco), to look into building refining and chemical plants in China.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Saudi Basic Industries Corp (<span style=\"color: #993300;\"><a style=\"color: #993300;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sabic.com\/en\" target=\"_blank\">SABIC<\/a><\/span>) and Sinopec, which already jointly run a chemical complex in Tinajin, also agreed to develop petrochemical projects in both China and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Saudi Arabia&#8217;s King Salman is on a month-long tour of Asia as Riyadh struggles with a slumping oil market and a desperate need to diversify its economy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Energy cooperation remains the foundation of relations between Saudi Arabia, the world\u2019s top exporter of crude oil, and China, the world\u2019s biggest importer, notes Naser Al-Tamimi in his article published in <span style=\"color: #993300;\"><a style=\"color: #993300;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1068981\/saudi-arabia\" target=\"_blank\">Arab News<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In January 2016, during President Xi Jinping\u2019s state visit to Saudi Arabia, the two countries established a comprehensive strategic partnership.<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #333333;\">China-Saudi Arabia to cooperate in diverse fields<\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">China is a reliable and stable market for Saudi Arabia\u2019s oil, President Xi said, calling for closer cooperation in such areas as energy, communication, aviation, finance and investment, culture, education, public health, technology, tourism, media and security.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">China supports Saudi Arabia as it advances on a development path suitable to its national conditions, maintains national sovereignty, security and development interests, and plays greater role in regional and global affairs, Xi said.<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #333333;\">Saudi Arabia hopes China will play greater role in Middle East<\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">King Salman appreciated China\u2019s role in maintaining international peace and security, expressing his hope for China&#8217;s greater role in Middle Eastern affairs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSaudi Arabia is willing to work hard with China to promote global and regional peace, security and prosperity,\u201d Salman said. He added he hoped China would increase its role in Middle East affairs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">China however has tried to maintain friendly ties with all sides despite conflicting geopolitical interests. &#8220;Instead of looking for a proxy in the Middle East, we promote peace talks,&#8221; Xi said. &#8220;Instead of attempting to fill the vacuum, we build a cooperative partnership network for win-win outcomes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Energy cooperation remains the foundation of relations between Saudi Arabia, the world\u2019s top oil exporter, and China, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[124,44,1],"tags":[137,45,134,356,21,101],"class_list":["post-4904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-middle-east","category-news","tag-asia","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-middle-east","tag-oil","tag-saudi-arabia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/China-SaudiArabia.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-1h6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4907,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions\/4907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}