Author: Thomas Woodrow
Publication: Jamestown Foundation
Date: October 24, 2002
(Thomas Woodrow was a senior China
analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency.)
Although current Chinese relations
with Saudi Arabia are largely linked to Beijing's quickly growing appetite
for imported energy resources, China's long-term goal may be to replace
the United States as the Persian Gulf's security guarantor.
Beijing is rapidly becoming a major
player in world oil markets, and increasingly sees access to energy resources
as a critical component of its national security and long-term military
strategy. It has assiduously cultivated ties with Riyadh since the mid-1980s,
when it sold CSS-2 nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missiles
(IRBMs) to Saudi Arabia. Some reports indicate that Saudi Arabia has been
involved in funding Pakistan's missile and nuclear program purchases from
China, which has resulted in Pakistan becoming a nuclear weapons-producing
and -proliferating state.
China maintains a very close relationship
with Saudi Arabia as a key component of its strategy to guarantee access
to oil resources in the Persian Gulf. Until 1995, China was a net exporter
of oil. In 2001, it imported over 60 million tons. Its need for imported
oil to maintain its GNP growth will at least double over the next decade.
It will very soon become a major influence in the global oil market, a
development that will have immense ramifications on resource competition
and international security ties.
China has already adjusted its foreign
policy and energy strategy to accommodate its need for a larger share of
the world's oil reserves. It has forged major oil deals with Sudan, Venezuela,
Iraq and Kazakhstan. With these deals have come important military and
security agreements. For instance, thousands of Chinese oil workers--and
Chinese military personnel disguised as oil workers--maintain security
at facilities in Sudan. During Chinese leader Jiang Zemin's spring 2001
visit to Venezuela, he was greeted by that oil-producing nation's leader
Hugo Chavez with the declaration that the Chinese Maoist revolution was
the source of his own social revolution. The Chinese and Venezuelan militaries
have dramatically stepped up ties since Chavez came to power. The Kazakh
deals involve the construction of a massive pipeline across China from
the huge Kazakh oil fields. China hopes to become a land bridge for future
oil deliveries to Japan and South Korea, giving Beijing important leverage
in its strategic goal to replace the United States as the major power in
the Eastern Asian basin.
China's relations with Saudi Arabia
involve military sales as well as commercial contracts. In the late 1980s,
China sold thirty-six CSS-2 IRBMs to Saudi Arabia; Chinese military personnel
maintain the CSS-2s at the two bases China built for the Saudis south of
Riyadh. The CSS-2, China's main regional nuclear weapon system, was originally
developed to target U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
With a range of some 3,000 kilometers, the CSS-2s in Saudi Arabia can theoretically
target almost all of the Middle East and parts of India. Requiring dozens
of vehicles and hundreds of personnel to prepare for launch, the CSS-2
is a cumbersome system. Its liquid fuel is highly corrosive and, if inhaled,
fatal, which makes fueling operations complicated. Saudi forces would likely
depend on Chinese specialists to prepare and launch its CSS-2 force, which
would give Beijing a great deal of say over how and under what circumstances
these titularly Saudi missiles would be used. The CSS-2 is a nuclear system,
but China claims it produced a conventional warhead for those CSS-2s it
sold to Saudi Arabia. Assuming that the Saudi CSS-2s do have conventional
warheads, and that Beijing has not secretly promised to deliver nuclear
warheads in the event of a crisis, these highly inaccurate Saudi CSS-2s
are basically junk. The Chinese in essence hoodwinked the Saudis into buying
an antique missile system worthless without its nuclear warhead.
Press reports have speculated that
China has approached the Saudis with offers to sell modern missile systems.
The 600-km range CSS-6 and 1800-km range CSS-5 solid-fueled missiles have
been mentioned. The 5500-km range CSS-3 intercontinental ballistic missile
would be another likely candidate as it is basically the CSS-2 with an
additional stage. Prince Sultan, the Saudi minister of defense, is reported
to have arranged the original China missile deal along with his sons Prince
Bandar Sultan--the current Saudi ambassador to the United States--and Prince
Khalid bin Sultan, the Saudi commander during Desert Storm. Prince Sultan
has in fact made a number of high-level visits to China over the past few
years and the airfield at his ranch near Riyadh was where the CSS-2 missiles
were reportedly secretly delivered in 1988. However, though Beijing would
no doubt love to sell another complete missile system to Riyadh--the CSS-2
deal was worth US$3-3.5 billion--the Saudis are probably aware they were
snookered. They are likely to be cautious before plunking down such huge
sums again.
A more likely candidate as a source
for future Saudi missile purchases is Pakistan. According to a number of
press reports, including those regarding the 1994 defection of a Saudi
diplomat, Saudi Arabia has been funding Pakistan's nuclear and missile
program purchases from China. The money certainly had to have come from
somewhere, as Pakistan has been bankrupt for years and the Chinese are
not known for their easy payment plans. In May 1999, following the Pakistani
nuclear tests, Prince Sultan toured the uranium-enrichment plant and missile
production facilities at Kahuta. Sultan may also have been present in Pakistan
at a May 2002 test launch of the nuclear-capable Ghauri missile. If these
reports are correct, what in essence has happened is that Saudi Arabia
has given money to China for Pakistan's missile and nuclear programs. If
so, Saudi Arabia could be buying a nuclear capability from China through
a proxy state with Pakistan serving as the cutout. If Riyadh's influence
over Pakistan extends to its nuclear programs, Saudi Arabia could rapidly
become a de facto nuclear power through a simple shipment of missiles and
warheads.
The recent announcement that Pakistan
has since 1997 bartered a deal with North Korea in which Chinese nuclear
weapons technology has been exchanged for North Korean missiles adds a
new twist to the scenario. North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program,
according to statements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld evidently
centered at underground facilities near Kumchangni, violates a pledge made
by Pyongyang in 1994. Chinese technicians working at Pakistan's nuclear
and missile facilities almost certainly had to have known about these transfers;
Beijing deliberately kept this information hidden from Washington. These
events underscore how America's historically lackadaisical attitude towards
Chinese nuclear and missile proliferation has come back to haunt it.
Although China and Saudi Arabia
have a lot in common--they are, after all, both highly conservative police
states paranoid about social unrest and succession issues--it remains unlikely
that China could replace the United States as the security guarantor of
the Persian Gulf in the near term. Speculation that the Sultan branch of
the Saudi royal family would shift its allegiance to China if it were to
come to power seems illogical in the face of the massive U.S. military
and economic presence in the Gulf. The Sultans' involvement in the missile
dealings with Beijing was done not out of a desire to link Saudi Arabia
closer to China. They did it for the money, and possibly to gain access
to an Islamic bomb. This is not to say that unrest in Riyadh could not
lead to a strategic realignment. Stranger things have happened--witness
the sudden collapse of the Shah's pro-U.S. regime next door in Iran--and
China may be positioning itself to be able to swoop on an opportunity in
case there should be a sudden crisis in the Saudi royal succession. What
does seem certain is that China will assiduously attempt to enlarge its
toehold of influence in the Persian Gulf as its oil appetite grows and
that relations with Saudi Arabia will remain a key component of this strategy.
