In China and Saudi Arabia have signed a number of agreements, including on energy and investments, joining us to take a deeper dive here as a Bloomberg Global Business reporter, Bruce Einhorn, Thanks so much, Bruce for your time. This has a number of dimensions, leading from financial like an oil deal, to implications of UH Saudi SIGNO U S relationships. Let's start with energy. What do we know about what they did?
So there are a bunch of deals that they signed, and to be clear, these are largely memorandums of understanding. These aren't final agreements, so you know, we should look at these with a bit of caution. UH. That said, they did sign deals related to hydrogen energy, solar power, UM hydrogen. For instance, they they signed an m OU
to set up a hydrogen cracking project. UM hydrogen of course has potential to be UH real green fuel going forward, and UM relates to you Saudi Arabia's efforts to transition away from its UH really strong reliance on on fossil fuels. Okay, now there's a real interesting geopolitical angle to all of this.
Every everything is UH these days, BRUSA, but really the dynamic turning of the of Saudia's turning a cold shoulder of the US on controlling oil prices and production and then meeting with President she and rolling out the red car. But if you will, can we take anything away from that? Well, there are clearly is UH in attempt by both Beijing and Riad to um intensively to developed ties. China is
the largest trading partner now for Saudi Arabia. The US used to be, but the US hasn't relied so much on Saudi Arabia for oil of course for for many years now thanks to UM fracking in the United States, China, UM and so UM. In addition to the economic relationship, both China and Saudi Arabia of course not democratic governments, so authoritarian leaders who can see some common interests. So it does make sense that this is a relationship that
both sides want to pursue. Yeah, Shaudi Arabia has to walk an interesting balance too, because it still needs a US for for arms production. But also coming out of this it looks as if a China is willing to supply some of that as well. UM yes um uh. China has already been a major supplier of military drones to Saudi Arabia UM and to other countries in the region. UH so uh they could be trying to build on that. UM. Of course, UH, China's capability as of exporting uh weapons,
military equipment nothing like the United States. So UM. As much as Saudi Arabia would like to perhaps put distance between itself and the US U, UM, it still is going to need Washington if it does want to be able to get all arms at once. Yeah, and the two also agreeing Bruce to a strengthen collaboration at the u N, the G twenty, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Now you pointed out at the top a lot of this stuff. You know, they can posture and do what they want,
but there are a lot of dynamics at play here. Yes, yeah, UM, but I think you know, we we do need to um. Keep in mind that a lot of these deals are things that are just um uh tentative deals. They're not full fledged deals. But clearly they are sending a message from both sides that they do want to develop this relationship further. Yeah, all right, Bruce, Hey, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it very much. Bruce iron Horn, Bloomberg Global business reporter,