‘World will be watching’: can Saudi Arabia’s crown prince MBS deliver Expo 2030 success?

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

• The event will coincide with the completion of Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s US$1.25 trillion programme to ‘transform’ Saudi Arabia into a modern powerhouse

• By authoring the kingdom’s ‘success story’, he could also further ‘rehabilitate’ his global standing, which was smeared in 2018 over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi

  Now comes the hard part. Saudi Arabia won the rights to host Expo 2030 and the global spotlight will no doubt be trained on the ongoing “historical transformation” of its economy under the rapaciously ambitious Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

  But the 38-year-old leader will have to deliver and meet the high expectations of Saudi Arabia’s fast-growing youthful population and prospective foreign investors alike, long-time observers of the oil-rich desert kingdom told This Week In Asia.

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  Underpinning all this spending is “an intention to transform the country socially and economically, although perhaps not politically”, said Guy Burton, an independent political analyst who has previously taught international politics at universities in Belgium, Iraq, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.

  The aim is to reduce the country’s dependence on hydrocarbons, “not least” because the global trend is transitioning to renewable sources of energy.

  “So if the Saudi leadership doesn’t lead on this, it risks being left behind and having to deal with the aftermath, which might be messy,” he said.

  Nor is the type of economic diversification envisaged by Vision 2030 new, either in Saudi Arabia or the wider Gulf region.

  “They’ve had several efforts at this in previous decades, but it’s proved difficult to break the link between the relatively easy rents generated by oil and gas production and the generous social contracts provided to their national populations,” Burton observed.

  “In short, it’s very hard to see how you break out of your dependence on oil rents when your whole diversification strategy seems to be predicated on those oil rents,” he added.

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  However, Burton said it was “hard to see how the current diversification efforts won’t have an effect” on the national population, especially since the Gulf model has long been one where many nationals tend to work in comfortable public-sector jobs or have access to generous public subsidies.

  Many of the diversification strategies emphasise a bigger and more active private sector, which “entails an element of risk and uncertainty” for those working in it.

  “That requires a social and cultural shift – and eventually a political one – and it’s not clear to me that that is being attempted,” said Burton, who is the author of China and Middle East Conflicts: Responding to War and Rivalry from the Cold War to the Present.

  People walk by a building under renovation protected with a canvas decorated with a commercial promoting the Riyadh Expo 2030, on November 28. Photo: AP

  MBS and his close aides are “keen to present” the ‘new’ Saudi Arabia as “young and more liberal, more go-getting”.

  But not only has the crown prince “apparently pushed aside” the conservative clerics who previously had a lot of influence within the Saudi regime, “if he doesn’t prepare the younger population for this greater uncertainty, then he could face considerable backlash”.

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