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Saudi Crown Prince tours Asia to mend fences and make money

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has arrived in Beijing as part of a high-profile tour of East and South East Asia, following a diplomatic crisis over the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. His Beijing stop comes after visits to Pakistan and India. Human rights are not on the agenda.

Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of their meeting in New Delhi.
Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of their meeting in New Delhi. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
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Crown prince Salman is still under the shadow of the murder of Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year, possibly under direct orders from Salman himself.

Apart from the Khashoggi murder, relations between the US and Saudi Arabia recently came into the limelight again when it became known that Washington wished to sell nuclear technology to Riyad.

This matter is now under investigation by the US Congress, and its fallout is still uncertain. But it may help to explain why the Saudis are now looking elsewhere to prop up their economic relations.

Meanwhile, Beijing is involved in a large-scale crackdown against its Muslim minority in the western Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

According to Human Rights Watch and other organisations, Chinese authorities detained tens of thousands, some say up to a million, Uyghurs in camps where they are being submitted to systematic brainwashing and electronic surveillance with the aim of “eradicating religious extremism.”

Muslim solidarity?

Did crown prince Salman, heir to the Saudi throne and set to become the next Guardian of the Two Holy Mosques, one of the most important functions within the Muslim world, and Imran Kahn, president of Pakistan, one of the world’s most populous Muslim countries and neighbour of China, discuss Beijing’s brutal crackdown?

“Pakistan has had its own share of problems and I don’t think the country can really risk losing big investments from China by raising an issue that is totally an internal matter of the Chinese Republic,” says Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani political analyst and head of the Center of Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, an independent think tank.

“They tell the Pakistani officials that the issue of the Muslims in western Xinjiang is being dealt with according to the laws of the land.

“And there hasn’t been an open debate or a public or private conversation about this issue."

What does this say about Muslim solidarity?

“Muslim solidarity comes next to economic interests,” says Gul. “International bilateral relations are defined and driven mostly by economic interests, not by religious beliefs or mere emotions.”

Investment in India

After Pakistan, crown prince Salman went to India. Following his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Saudi Arabian royal said the kingdom saw investment opportunities likely to exceed $100 billion.

He also vowed to help efforts to crack down on terrorism, as the Indian-Arab meeting was overshadowed by a suicide bomb attack that India has blamed on Pakistan, a key Saudi ally.

Kamal Chenoy, a political science professor with the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, thinks that crown prince Salman tried to add to his personal status by attempting to broker some sort of truce between India and Pakistan.

He added that Salman had faced little criticism, in India or in Pakistan, regarding his alleged involvement in the Khashoggi murder.

“No one in the Indian establishment or the Pakistani establishment says very much about that.”

Salman 'vulnerable'

He won’t expect criticism from China either, and observers think he will refrain from attacking Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs.

“It is just too difficult,” says Michael Dillon, in UK-based independent China scholar and Xinjiang specialist.

“First of all, Mohammad bin Salman is vulnerable. And in the end, what this tour is about is money and energy.

“Mere matters of imprisonment, torture and murder are not going to be allowed to get in the way of economic arrangements,” he says.

And one of the economic arrangements concerns Saudi oil sales to China.

At the end of last year, Saudi Arabia overtook Russia as China’s largest crude oil supplier, breaking Russia’s 19-month streak of delivering the most crude to China – the world’s largest oil importer.

Despite its disappointing economic performance last year, China continues to have an insatiable hunger for oil, of which the Saudis still have plenty.

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