Growing Connectivity between the Gulf and East Asia
THE DIPLOMAT
The past two decades have seen growing and substantive ties between the Arab Gulf states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Asia. Those ties have been mainly economic and include significant two-way investment as well as trade. More recently there are emerging signs of security cooperation, although what the eventual outline will be is unclear.
In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the UAE take the lead in these exchanges, followed some way behind by Qatar. The first two account for the majority of GCC exports to Asia. But while oil and gas make up three-quarters of Saudi exports and 87 percent of Qatar’s exports, these products amount to just under half of the UAE’s exports.
