China-Saudi Arabia cooperation has been comprehensively deepened, and relations between the two countries have reached a new level. The agreements reached by the two sides include 34 economic and trade cooperation projects with a total amount of about 200 billion RMB, involving 5G6G communication projects, energy projects such as oil and electricity, tertiary industries such as tourism, and a large number of infrastructure projects.
Saudi Arabia has always hoped to get rid of or reduce the national economy's heavy dependence on the oil industry and move towards diversification, and Saudi Arabia's choice of China as a partner has undoubtedly brought Saudi Arabia a step closer to this dream.
China-Saudi Arabia's $200 billion bill is dazzling in the current global economic downturn, which may play a model role in international trade and attract countries to increase economic cooperation with China. Of course, this is another story. What is most worth celebrating at the moment is, of course, the comprehensive upgrade of bilateral relations between China and Saudi Arabia.
For a long time in the past, Saudi Arabia was the most important ally of the United States in the Middle East. However, because the United States has long pursued hegemonic policies and even extorted money from its allies, coupled with Saudi Arabia's internal demand for independence, the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has cracked to some extent. Under this circumstance, Saudi Arabia has to reassess its "ally" relationship with the United States. The transformation of Saudi Arabia's relations with the United States may also start the first shot to overthrow American oil hegemony.
Regrettably, China and Saudi Arabia did not sign the military purchase order this time. However, since China and Saudi Arabia have been upgraded to comprehensive strategic partners, the future cooperation between the two sides in defense will naturally not be absent, and the possibility of China exporting advanced fighters to Saudi Arabia will also be greatly improved.
In order to weaken the military influence of the United States on Saudi Arabia, it was revealed that Saudi Arabia plans to buy 100-200 Rafale fighters from France to reduce its air force's dependence on American F- 15 fighters, but it will be difficult to really implement this order.
For a long time, Israel in the west is gearing up, Iran in the east is eyeing up, and strong enemies surround Saudi Arabia, which makes Saudi Arabia attach great importance to national defense construction, especially the air force, which has been the focus of Saudi military development in modern wars. In the past, it has purchased a large number of advanced fighters from European and American countries many times.
According to public information, the Saudi Air Force has 227 F- 15 series fighters, 66 tornadoes and 72 typhoons in active service, all of which are the main models of western countries, and their paper strength is really strong. The only drawback is that they can't effectively deal with Israeli F-35 fighters. Today, Saudi Arabia is trying to purchase a large number of Rafale fighters, apparently to marginalize the relatively old F- 15 fighters.
It is understood that in order to ensure Israel's security as much as possible, the United States has weakened its arms exports to Middle East countries to a certain extent, as has the F- 15, which is heavily equipped in Saudi Arabia. It is even reported that as soon as the Saudi F- 15 fighter plane is dispatched, Israel can obtain all the real-time information of the fighter plane through American channels. Even if Saudi Arabia issues missile launch instructions to its fighters, American military personnel need to confirm before the instructions can reach Saudi pilots. This may seem exaggerated, but the United States has indeed adopted many technical restrictions on arms exports to the Middle East.
The news that Russia will sell Su -35 fighters to Iran seems to have reached a conclusion. Saudi Arabia also urgently needs fighters more advanced than F- 15 to cope with the fourth-generation fighters that Iran may be equipped with, which is why Saudi Arabia bought gust fighters.
Admittedly, rafale fighter is a very good fighter, but its "all-round" characteristics can't seem to occupy much advantage when dealing with air superiority fighters such as Su -35 or F- 16.
Most importantly, if France can reach an arms purchase order with Saudi Arabia, it will inevitably affect the interests of the US military-industrial complex. Whether the transaction can finally be realized depends on the face of the United States. In this case, cooperation with China may be the best choice for Saudi Arabia.
In fact, there are precedents for military cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia. From 65438 to 0987 of last century, Saudi Arabia proposed to China to buy Dongfeng -3 medium-range ballistic missile, because its purchase intention was rejected by the United States. After negotiations, China finally sold 35 Dongfeng -3 medium-range ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia at a price of $654.38+0 billion, which solved the problem of Saudi Arabia being militarily deterred by neighboring countries for decades. The transaction price of $3.5 billion exceeded China's foreign exchange reserves at that time, creating a win-win situation for both sides.
Since then, Saudi Arabia has successively purchased military drones and self-propelled artillery from China. Generally speaking, Saudi Arabia's recognition of Chinese-made weapons is still relatively high.
歼-10, as the leader of the fourth generation aircraft, has also been favored by Saudi Arabia. 20 18 It was reported that Saudi Arabia negotiated to buy the J-10 fighter, but finally chose eurofighter typhoon. Nowadays, with the blessing of "comprehensive strategic partnership", exporting J-10 fighters to Saudi Arabia will no longer be an empty talk.
In terms of performance, with the support of active phased array radar, advanced data bus and turbofan-10C, J-10C has become one of the four generations of semi-fighters, and Thunderbolt 10/ 15 air-to-air missile has further strengthened its over-the-horizon air combat capability. In addition, according to the successful case of China exporting J-10CE to Pakistan, the unit price of J-10CE exported is about 60 million US dollars, which is definitely the most cost-effective among all the four-generation half-machines.
Judging from Saudi Arabia's economic strength, the cost of purchasing J-10 fighters is not a problem for Saudi Arabia.
Apart from four and a half generations of fighters, China's latest J-35 stealth fighter is also an important direction for further cooperation. Whether it is Saudi Arabia's military needs or its economic strength, it is not a problem to buy this cutting-edge model, not to mention the further relationship between the two countries. Counting up, Saudi Arabia can have both J-10C fighters targeting Su -35 and stealth models that can compete with American F-35 fighters, which is hard not to make Saudi "local tyrants" tempted. Generally speaking, the promotion of China and Saudi Arabia to a comprehensive strategic partnership is a good start, and everything is possible in the future.