China President Xi Jinping and the United Arab Emirates’ two powerful and influential leaders, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum met on Friday. They signed their deal about business and trading agreements expecting to have a successful commercialism between China and the Middle East.
Xi’s visit was his first meeting after 29 years. During their assembly, they have discussed the 13 memoranda and agreements including the approval of the first Chinese state-owned financial services firm to be set-up in Abu Dhabi Global Market which is known as the business center. In addition, China National Petroleum Corporation and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company agreed to the joint business possibilities.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid tweeted in Arabic, “We have many areas of political and economic agreement and a solid base of projects in the energy, technology and infrastructure sectors. More importantly (we have) a strong political will to start a greater phase of cooperation and integration.” He also added that together with Chinese leaders, UAE and China has an exemplary relation. Seeing UAE as its perfect part of the plan is enough for them to close the deal.
China is the second largest business partner of UAE and the biggest source of imports too. While the UAE, on the other hand, is the China’s gateway to its 60 percent exports bound to the Middle East. According to Sultan bin Saeed al-Mansouri, UAE’s economy minister there is an expected $58 billion bilateral trade in 2018 from $53.5 billion from last year.
“This future of cooperation is broad as both UAE and China are advocates of the economies and multilateralism. On this, we have mutual interest and a joint position,” Zhong Shan, China’s commerce minister said. He added that China is completely ready to cooperate with UAE to boost the economy.
China was part of the Middle East conflicts even though the country relies on it for oil. However, when Xi came into power six years ago China had to stop its involvement.
