2016年CRI Observers: Xi's Visit to Middle East Making History

During President Xi's time in the three countries, China has established comprehensive strategic partnerships 1 with Saudi Arabia and Iran and has agreed to boost cooperation with Egypt under the Silk Road Initiative.

Mark J Ellyne, with the University of Cape 2 Town, said the visit to the three major economies in the Middle East will help exploit the great potential for trade between China and the region.

"This is an important visit and these three particular countries represent a very large share of Middle East GDP. In fact, if we take Saudi Arabia, which is the largest, plus Iran, plus Egypt, we're talking about almost 1.5 trillion dollars of GDP, which is probably the size of all of Sub-Saharan Africa combined. So this represents more than 10 percent of the Chinese economy. So we're talking about major trading partners."

China has been Iran's biggest trading partner for the last six years in a row, and is the second largest trading partner of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the top source of crude oil for China, while Iran contributed 8 percent of China's total crude oil imports in the first 11 months of last year.

In the same period, China saw its exports to Egypt rise over 12 percent to nearly 11 billion U.S dollars with a total trade volume exceeding 11 billion.

Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Rowsch Shaways said Chinese support will be a great help to many of the oil-producing countries in the region especially at a time when oil prices are plummeting 3.

"They are going through a very difficult economic crisis, financial crisis because of the price of the oil. Most of these countries are needing financial support, loans for completing their budget, and this is a way that China can be very helpful for our countries."

Ellyne, based in Cape Town, believes China should be portrayed 4 as more than simply a consumer of raw materials when it comes to global cooperation.

He singled out the China-proposed Silk Road initiatives.

"They've designed the One Belt One Road strategy, which is linked to the sort of old Silk Road idea, both an overland trade route from Europe to China, as well as a maritime 5 trade route. So they're trying to develop those in greater detail with the partner countries along the way. Of course, Iran is a very critical country in this regard, Saudi Arabia would fit in, and Egypt fits in from the maritime strategy. So for the One Belt One Road, these countries would be important partners in the One Belt One Road approach. And I think China is trying to look at this as a win-win situation for both its partners and itself."

China has vowed 6 to increase two-way trade with Middle East countries from 240 billion U.S. dollars in 2013 to 600 billion in the coming decade.

And during his visit to the Headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised a 15-billion-U.S. dollar special loan for production capacity cooperation and infrastructure 7 construction, 10 billion dollars of commercial loans to support production capacity cooperation, and 10 billion dollars of concessional loans.

For CRI, this is Luo Wen.