Construction Middle East is top recipient of Chinese Belt and Road deals By Gavin Gibbon March 5, 2025, 4:29 PM Reuters/Hamad I Mohammed The King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station in Riyadh. The $5.6bn subway contract accounted for nearly a third of Chinese construction investment in Saudi Arabia Total value doubles from 2023 Saudi deals worth $19bn US and China vie for influence The Middle East was the top recipient of construction and investment deals under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2024, with the total value reaching $39 billion. That may not go down well in Washington. Saudi Arabia and construction topped the list, according to a report by Griffith Asia Institute, based in Queensland, Australia. The value of construction projects involving Chinese companies doubled from 2023. Saudi Arabia accounted for the biggest chunk of those deals, or $19 billion, more than triple the number for 2023 of $5.9 billion. Riyadh’s subway contract accounted for nearly a third of that, or $5.6 billion. “The Gulf appears in the middle of a tug of war between Washington and Beijing,” said James Swanston, Middle East and North Africa economist at London-based Capital Economics. The BRI, often referred to as the New Silk Road, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in more than 150 countries and international organisations. After Saudi Arabia in the BRI “engagement” report, Iraq came in second at $9 billion – a ninefold increase over 2023 – and the UAE at $3.1 billion. Since the BRI was announced, Chinese companies have signed infrastructure contracts worth $103 billion in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, $17 billion in Iraq and $12 billion in Iran. The GCC is made up of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. “We expect that, at most, the Gulf would sit as unaligned in our view while the global economy is fracturing into a US and China-led bloc,” said Swanston. US President Donald Trump this month doubled US tariffs on Chinese imports to 20 percent as he seeks to cut his trade deficit with the world’s second-largest economy. China retaliated with tariff rises of its own on US products. Jonathan Fulton: Gulf-China relations are strictly business Masdar and Silk Road Fund to co-invest in renewables Acwa Power takes China bank loan in first for Saudi Arabia But even as Gulf-China trade rises and may overtake Gulf-West trade in 2027, according to a study from think-tank Asia House, President Trump has been more than happy to court Saudi Arabia and vice versa. Calling Saudi Arabia a “special place with special leaders”, Trump last month individually greeted Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the state-owned Public Investment Fund, and Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Jadaan, the Saudi finance minister and chairman of Aramco, at a Saudi-organised investment conference in Miami. In turn, Saudi Arabia has pledged to increase trade and investment with the US to at least $600 billion over President Trump’s four-year term.
