China entrepreneur summit in Abu Dhabi, Arab League summit in Manama, other news
The big China-MENA news here in Abu Dhabi is the China-Arab Entrepreneurs Summit which is happening this week. This is a joint effort from the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Sino International Entrepreneurs Federation, and there are around 200 delegates. I’m working on a longer piece about China-Gulf investment that I plan to put out next week, but some of takeaways so far from the summit.
PRC ambassador Zhang Yiming said Chinese investment into the Emirates increased by 16% in 2023 to $1.3 billion, accounting for 60% of total Chinese investment in the Arab world. This is impressive but not particularly unusual; the UAE typically gets the lion’s share of MENA’s FDI, drawing 41% between 2003-2021. The bigger line from the ambassador’s remarks was UAE investment into China increased by 120% last year, and that GCC countries’ sovereign wealth funds have “directly acquired and invested in China to the amount of $2.3 billion.” Like I said, more on this in a longer piece next week, but 120% is probably less impressive than it sounds - what were the raw numbers from last year? And $2.3 billion is pretty modest when you look at the amount of money being managed in GCC sovereign wealth funds’ portfolios. A quick Google search has Mubadala with $284 billion in assets, QIA with $475 billion, ADIA at $853 billion, and PIF at $925 billion.
Other stuff in the news today:
The Arab League Summit took place in Manama this week (here’s the text of the Bahrain Declaration). Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa as the rotating head of the Arab League which was filled with the usual boiler-plate catch phrases. The China-Arab States Cooperation Forum will hold its ministerial meeting in Beijing at the end of the month though, and expect developments from that. The CASCF ministerial meetings happen every 2 years and sets the China-Arab League agenda (for an overview check out this episode of the China-MENA Podcast with Dawn Murphy). Gaza is the big agenda item for this year’s meeting. It’s a big deal in China-MENA relations but usually flies under the radar for English media; I’ll be watching it closely.
Another upcoming meeting to monitor: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs will be meeting in Astana on May 20-21. This will be the first since Iran became a full member in the SCO last summer so watching to see what if any role it plays in shaping the agenda.
On Wednesday May 15, China Railway Construction Corporation completed the first Chinese project for Saudi’s NEOM, a 9.48km adit tunnel.
Syrian Minister of Electricity Ghassan al-Zamel spoke with Xinhua about Syria’s plans to generate 200 megawatts of wind power soon, with the help of "friendly countries" to develop renewable energy. Also in China-Syria, ambassador Shi Hongwei spoke at an event rolling out cooperation between China International Development Cooperation Agency, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Syria:
‘“We hope this project will play an important role in providing humanitarian assistance and whatever we can in this context,” said the Chinese ambassador, who also revealed that China recently delivered special equipment for the telecommunications sector, which helped offer telephone and internet services to approximately one and a half million Syrians.’ (via Prensa Latina)
Last month QatarEnergy and China State Shipbuilding signed a $6 billion deal to build 18 LNG carriers. This week the head LNG for of Petro China International said he expected China’s LNG imports to increase by 9-12% from 2023. Keep an eye out for China-Qatar trade news.
Finally, China and Algeria signed a memorandum of cooperation on digitization and the digital economy. No relevant details in the story, but I’m expecting a lot more of these types of announcements in North Africa in coming months.