UAE & Japan negotiating a CEPA, MBZ's upcoming DC trip, Saudi/Israel/Palestine, CCP International Dept official in Doha
Not a lot of China-specific news, but all of these stories shape the regional landscape that China is encountering.
UAE, Japan launch Cepa negotiations to boost trade, economic growth - Khaleej Times. Very interesting news. I was talking with a Japanese official this time last year who told me the UAE was pushing for a CEPA, and Tokyo was reluctant. The official told me that the preference was for a Japan-GCC FTA instead given the larger combined market and the time and resources required to negotiate a deal like this means the Japanese wanted maximum impact. It looks like Abu Dhabi convinced them.
CEPAs, or comprehensive economic partnership agreements, are the order of the day in the UAE, which has signed 11 so far and plans for 26. These are mostly bilateral agreements; 21 will be country-to-country, and 5 will be economic blocs. From Khaleej Times earlier this year:
The Cepa programme was a major component of the “Projects of the 50”, launched in September 2021 to strengthen the UAE's position as a global trade, business and investment hub. Cepas have also been designed to support greater foreign direct investment (FDI) flows as UAE aims to attract $150 billion in foreign investment by 2031 and rank among the top 10 countries globally in term of attracting FDI.
That Japan is getting one is interesting much like India is interesting. Japan is a major trade partner for the UAE, third largest overall in 2022 after China and India with a total trade volume of nearly $47 billion. PM Kishida visited last July as part of a larger Gulf trip, and launched several initiatives: the "Japan-UAE Innovation Partnership", which consists of the "Japan-UAE Scheme for Cooperation in Advanced Technology (JU-CAT)" a new framework, the "Energy Security and Industry Accelerator", and the "Cooperation on the Semiconductor and Battery Industries and Technologies". The point, I think, was to change the perception of the economic relationship from an energy buyer to a partner in the Emirates’ energy transition. So with all this momentum, a CEPA makes sense. And just to emphasize the tangible potential outcomes of a CEPA: the UAE-India CEPA resulted in a trade increase of 16% in the first year.
President Sheikh Mohamed's White House visit shines spotlight on decades-old UAE-US trade ties - The National. This provides a good overview of what to expect from MBZ’s trip to Washington next week. Beyond typical bilateral issues, agenda items include advanced technology, clean energy, space technology, supply chain and critical infrastructure investments.
This section on economic ties is useful - over $1 trillion of UAE investment into the US really underscores the difference between Gulf investment into China vs the US.
The UAE has been the top export market for US goods since 2009 in the Middle East and North Africa region, according to data from the UAE Embassy in Washington, DC. In 2023, record figures were posted, with bilateral trade between the two nations hitting $31.4 billion, it said.
The US exported more than $24.8 billion of goods and services to the UAE, a 19 per cent jump from 2022 – resulting in an $18.3 billion trade surplus for the US, which is America’s fourth largest globally, official data shows. US companies "continue to invest significantly" in key UAE sectors including energy, aerospace, technology and financial markets, it said.
The Emirates, meanwhile, has trade relations with all 50 US states and has supported the creation of about 166,000 American jobs, the embassy data said. Its investments in the US have surpassed $1 trillion, spanning from real estate to renewable energy, it added. The US was also among the UAE's key re-export partners that grew in the first half of 2024, UAE government data showed last month.
Saudi Arabia will not recognize Israel without Palestinian state, crown prince tells Shoura Council - Arab News. I’m not convinced that normalization is anywhere close to being off the table, but the cost just keeps getting higher.
“The Kingdom will not stop its tireless work toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and we affirm that the Kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that,” the crown prince said.
The Case Against Israeli-Saudi Normalization: A Deal Won’t Forge a Two-State Solution or Push China Out of the Middle East - Foreign Affairs. For an argument against a US-Saudi-Israel deal, this piece by Frederic Wehrey and Jennifer Kavanagh:
The single-minded pursuit of this bad deal has also blinded U.S. policymakers to other, more important drivers of conflict in the region, and it has caused the United States to delay efforts to ramp up pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza. The next U.S. president should therefore jettison the proposed accord and focus Middle East policy instead on the economic and social issues most important to the region.
Secretary-General of Ministry of Foreign Affairs Meets Chinese Official - Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A short release from Qatar’s MOFA. It’s only interesting to me in that a week after Saudi and the UAE got a visit from Premier Li Qiang, Qatar gets a visit from the deputy minister of the CCP’s International Department. No details about the meeting that I’ve seen yet. The ID’s primary function is liaising with political parties and intelligence gathering on said parties. Taking a leap here but I assume Palestine and Hamas are focal points of the meeting.
HE Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Dr. Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi met on Thursday with HE Vice Minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Li Mingxiang, who is visiting the country.
During the meeting, they reviewed cooperation relations between the two countries.