Illustration: Chen Xia/GT
China and Saudi Arabia are increasing their agricultural cooperation, as contracts signed at a forum on Tuesday in Beijing exceeded $4 billion, showing the vast cooperation potential between the two countries.
The contracts were announced at a sustainable development forum held by the Beijing Sub-council of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), which attracted more than 60 Saudi companies.
Chinese and Saudi enterprises and institutions signed more than 70 cooperation agreements with a total value exceeding $4 billion, covering areas such as green technology application, intelligent equipment output, biological breeding research and development and cross-border supply chains, according to the Beijing Sub-council of the CCPIT.
China and Saudi Arabia have strong complementarity in the agricultural field, and great potential for cooperation in infrastructure construction, agricultural product production and processing, smart agriculture, green planting and breeding. It is hoped that enterprises from both sides will work together to give full play to their advantages in science and technology for more leading scientific and technological achievements, said Zhang Jianwei, Party Secretary of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Beijing Sub-council
China and Saudi Arabia have made great progress in the economic and trade fields, and we also hope to bring the mutual benefits of cooperation to both parties in the field of agriculture, said Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen AlFadley, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture, at the forum.
The two countries have achieved fruitful results in practical cooperation in various fields.
Official data showed that Saudi Arabia is China’s largest trading partner in the Middle East, and China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner. In 2024, bilateral trade was $107.53 billion, of which China’s exports amounted to $50.05 billion and imports amounted to $57.48 billion.
Among our more than 100 projects around the world, more than 50 are in cooperation with China. In the past 10 years, we have carried out a large number of seawater desalination projects and used them to generate electricity. I hope to carry out more cooperation with Chinese companies, said Saleh Al Khabti, Chinese president from ACWA Power at the forum.
Osama Kokandy, Saudi Chinese Business Council Member, highlighted Chinese market opportunities.
Cooperation with China is not limited to agriculture, and there are also projects in several sectors, such as manufacturing, technology, and mining, Kokandy told the Global Times on Tuesday.
When asked to identify the driving forces behind the two countries’ intensified economic cooperation, Kokandy said that there are several forces, and the first is supply and demand.
I can see there is demand in the Saudi market for Chinese products, and there is also demand for Saudi products in China, he said.