On June 18, Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, paid an official visit to China to meet his Chinese counterpart, Admiral Dong Jun, and discuss ways to boost the military partnership between the two states. The Saudi defense minister’s first visit to Beijing should come as a little surprise as China’s arms exports to Riyadh have increased significantly in recent years.
Although the United States has traditionally occupied the role of Saudi Arabia’s main security partner and predominant arms supplier, between 2016 and 2020, China increased its arms transfers to Saudi Arabia by nearly 400 percent compared to the previous five-year period. In 2017, Saudi Arabia acquired several Chinese Wing Loong II drones and entered into a memorandum of understanding with China to manufacture an additional 300 drones domestically. The export of Chinese-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has become a political football between Riyadh and Washington, which refused to sell indigenously manufactured UAVs to the Gulf states—prompting a frustrated Saudi Arabia to look eastward.