King’s tour enhances Saudi-Asian partnerships By Prince Faisal Bin Saud

Sawudi Gazette
THE recent tour of Custodian of Two Holy Mosques King Salman, starting with Malaysia, including Indonesia, Brunei, Japan and China and ending with Jordan, was significant. King Salman tour enhances political, economic and security amid a growing Saudi-Asian partnership. Such tour comes within the context of providing cooperation potentials with all friendly countries serving mutual benefits with eastern and western partners and enhancing the positive and constructive international relations.
Although the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s relations with Asian partners witnessed huge development during the past two decades, King Salman’s current tour suggested further opportunities to be extended within such partnerships. Such partnerships still have investment and cooperation opportunities, especially in light of KSA and its partners’ desire to develop such partnerships through joint ventures in all economic, commercial and investment aspects. Political and security cooperation shall also be enhanced to provide an environment that encourages such partnerships and new mechanisms for cooperation between the Kingdom and all visited countries.
KSA keeps good relations and significant economic interests with the visited countries, along with similar perspective in most regional and international cases. The purpose of such a tour is to boost such relations of more importance in light of global economic and political changes.
From the KSA perspective, this wide tour suggests that the Saudi leadership relies on its partnership with the economically, scientifically and technically emerging Asian countries to the same extent upon which it relies in its firm relations with American and European partners.
Since its inception by King Abdul Aziz the Kingdom’s strategy has been based on open relation with the world, mutual benefits and non-interference in the commercial and economic affairs, which is the context within which this tours comes.
The tour also gained its significance by the KSA Vision 2030 and economic transformation program led by Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman’s leadership keen to introduce its new economic trends and future developmental vision, together with opportunities of cooperation in all economic, productive and service fields.
Asian partners is also encouraged to be involved within KSA Vision 2030 as serving the KSA interests and strategy for a diverse economic resources, while Asian partners will be granted the opportunity to invest in a G20 member state enjoying economic and political prestigious position.
While this historical tour emphasized the economic aspect, political aspect is still involved. King Salman’s meetings with state leaders covered significant political, security, regional and international issues, especially the global war against terrorism and threats to the region, in addition to issues of direct impact on the regional security.
All such issues are gaining Asian interest, as stability of the region is reflected on the whole continent and the world. Trading and navigation routes as well as power supply all intersect through such region. Such high-level diplomatic actions shall positively affect the KSA vision and requirements of regional stability and security.