CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VI (1) Contemporary-Eurasia-VI-1-engl | Page 46

ARAM ABAJYAN
Because of harsh consequences of international financial crisis in
2008, China-GCC trade volume declined in 2009, recovering again
only in the following year. In China’s Zhejiang province (Yiwu city)
vast population of Arab businessmen are involved in economic
various activities. Here China is producing the county’s main
exporting goods to the Gulf region. There are also many Chinese
people actively working in the GCC states, especially relatively large
Chinese population is visible in UAE 15 .
Between 2004 and 2007 China’s increase in global oil consumption
accounted for about 40 percent, and through 2030 its world demand
for oil is predicted to plus another 40 percent. In 2009 for the first
time China surpassed the United States in the volume of oil exports
from Saudi Arabia 16 .
Despite the cooperation with the West as it used to be in the past,
the GCC states are currently deepening economic and energy ties with
their Asian partners. In March 2009 the Emir of Qatar said the following:
“China is coming, India is coming, and Russia is on its way, too… I
don’t know if America and Europe will still be leading” 17 .
During the 2000s various economic initiatives took place between
individual GCC states and China. Trade and investment volume was
gradually rising. Mutually beneficial economic cooperation helped the
sides to deepen their ties by establishing Kuwait-China Investment
Company (KCIC) in 2005. Another notable achievement was the
revival of interest in GCC-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in
2009.
Hydrocarbon sector clearly remains significant area in Gulf-Asia
relations, however, other fields are developing rapidly as well. An
illustrative point for this case can be the substantial rise in Gulf-China
capital investments and joint ventures since the beginning of the new
15
Niblock T., Jacqueline Armijo, Lina Kassem and Ismail Fajrie Alatas, The Gulf
and Asia, Singapore Middle East Papers, Spring 2012, pp. 22-45.
https://www.mei.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Vol.-1-The-Gulf-and-
Asia1.pdf
16
Simpfendorfer B., China , , Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 30-32.
17
Ulrichsen K., Repositioning the GCC States in the Changing Global Order,
Journal of Arabian Studies 1 (2), 2011, p. 231, http://sci-
hub.tw/http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21534764.2011.630894
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