China will not replace the US in the Middle East anytime soon

CHINESE leader Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and his meetings in Riyadh with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) seemed to have raised a lot of concern, if not hysteria, in Washington.

There has been some talk about Riyadh abandoning its traditional relationship with Washington and pivoting to Beijing, leading to an evolving Chinese-Saudi axis, and about the prospects for a rising China replacing a declining America as the global hegemon in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. Some pundits have compared the cold shoulder that US President Joe Biden received from MBS during his trip to Saudi Arabia in July with the pomp and ceremony with which President Xi was welcomed by the Saudi crown prince a few weeks ago.

Indeed, the Saudi-led decision from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to sharply cut oil production in October – driving up pump prices in the midst of mounting inflation and just weeks before the US midterm elections – was seen as a slap in the face of the Biden administration. The Americans were counting on the Saudis to boost the supply of oil through the end of the year to help the US and its Western allies to offset the energy shortages resulting from the economic sanctions on Russia.