The New Silk Road

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the oil giant Saudi Aramco last year, he didn’t need a translator. Plenty of Chinese-speaking Saudis were on hand. A few years earlier, Saudi Aramco had sent dozens of employees to study in Beijing. After all, China, not the United States, represents the future growth for Saudi oil exports.

Meanwhile, the Saudis are sponsoring students to study in India, China, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea. Three of those countries — India, China and Malaysia — were among King Abdullah’s first four foreign visits after he ascended the throne in 2005.

The Saudi students represent one small part of the growing trade and business corridor between the Middle East and Asia. Dubbed the “new Silk Road,” trade and investment between the regions has quadrupled in the past decade and will continue to rise dramatically through 2020, according to the management consultant McKinsey & Co.

Here in Dubai, newspaper headlines last month spoke not of Iraq or of Arab-Israeli peace diplomacy but of the historic visit to India by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Maktum, Dubai’s CEO-like ruler. Among the dozens of agreements signed on the trip: a nearly $20 billion real estate project to create three townships on 40,000 acres in India’s Maharashtra state.

Washington Post