Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman yesterday arrived in China on the latest stop of a sweep through Asia that seeks to boost relations with the kingdom’s neighbors.
Prince Mohammad’s visit follows trips to India and Pakistan, which send millions of workers to Saudi Arabia and are seeking closer economic ties.
He is today to meet Chinese officials, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), highlighting Saudi Arabia’s importance as one of China’s top oil suppliers and a market for its exports, including military drones.
Photo: AFP
The visit underscores China’s attempts to balance its relationships in the Middle East, a major component of its Belt and Road Initiative.
Prince Mohammad’s visit follows one earlier this week by a high-powered delegation from Iran.
At a meeting on Wednesday, Xi told Iranian Islamic Consultative Assembly Speaker Ali Larijani that “China’s resolve to develop a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran will remain unchanged,” regardless of the evolving international situation, Xinhua news agency reported.
Saudi Arabia’s silence on the Uighur issue in Xinjiang is partly explained as a show of appreciation for China’s noninterference policy in other states’ domestic affairs, which contrasts with Western states’ linkage of foreign and economic relations, and human rights, said Jonathan Fulton, a political scientist at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed University.
It also reflects China’s success in framing its policies toward Muslim minorities as a struggle against political Islam, Fulton said.
“Many Arab countries are also concerned with Islamist political groups ... and see these as ideological threats to their governments,” he said.
Prince Mohammad is to visit South Korea after Beijing.
In New Delhi, he offered intelligence sharing and other cooperation with India in fighting extremism and terrorism, as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tackles rising tensions with Pakistan following a suicide bombing last week on Indian paramilitary soldiers in Kashmir.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS