Dubai - (AFP) - Washington's strategic partners, the Gulf states , are strengthening ties with China as part of an eastward turn aimed at diversifying economies historically dependent on fossil fuels.

The following are the main areas of economic cooperation between the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and the second largest economy in the world, ahead of the Gulf-China Summit to be held in Riyadh on Friday.

In 2020, China became the top trading partner of the six GCC countries, with fossil fuels dominating exchanges.

The second largest economy in the world buys petroleum products from the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, which alone covered about 17% of China's oil needs in 2021.

Qatar also supplies Beijing with liquefied natural gas.

On the sidelines of the global energy crisis linked to Ukraine, Doha and Beijing signed last November a 27-year agreement to supply it with liquefied gas, in one of the longest deals in the history of this industry.

The UAE is the first market for Chinese products in the Middle East and North Africa, and then re-exports them to the countries of the Arab world.

The summit scheduled to be held Friday in Riyadh between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the leaders of the Gulf states may be an opportunity to resume negotiations on the free trade agreement that began in July 2004.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, only nine rounds of negotiations have taken place so far, but the two sides pledged to "accelerate the process" during a visit by representatives of the Gulf Cooperation Council to Beijing last January.

In addition to trade exchanges, Chinese companies invested more than $107 billion in the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council between 2005 and 2022, according to figures issued by the American Enterprise Institute.

The largest share of these investments and construction projects is in Saudi Arabia, the largest economy in the Arab world, with a value of $49.6 billion in the same period.

Saudi Arabia ranks twelfth among the countries that invested the most in China in 2019, with $2.3 billion invested, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Gulf sovereign wealth funds are also looking to expand into Asia.

In 2015, the UAE sovereign fund, Mubadala, launched a joint fund with two Chinese companies worth $10 billion.
The Gulf states have sought to expand their partnerships with Beijing to include areas other than energy, such as weapons and technology.

And last February, the UAE announced its intention to order 12 military aircraft from China, weeks after it threatened to cancel a huge deal to buy US F-35 fighter jets, in protest against the strict conditions.

In an effort by the Gulf states to reduce their dependence on oil, they have resorted to Chinese technologies to develop the fifth generation or build smart cities.

The Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei, has won several contracts in the region, despite the reservations of Western countries that denounce its links with the Chinese army and the danger of using it for surveillance purposes.