China and Saudi Arabia team up for a Haichang Ocean Park expansion
Haichang Ocean Park, which runs six parks in mainland China, is now teaming up with Saudi Arabia's Tourism Development Fund.
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The backstory: China depends heavily on Saudi Arabia for oil – it provided about 18% of China’s oil imports at US$65 billion in 2022, making up 83% of what Saudi Arabia sends to the nation overall. Saudi Arabia is also a big deal for China in Arab trade, especially in areas like security and tech, contributing to around a quarter of its overall trade in the region.
In 2016, Saudi Arabia kicked off Vision 2030, its plan to become a top 15 global economy by 2030. The kingdom is focusing on expanding things like health care, infrastructure and tourism. Saudi Arabia also launched its Tourism Development Fund (TDF) in 2020 with an initial investment of US$4 billion, aiming to attract 100 million visitors and make tourism a big part of the kingdom’s economy by 2030.
More recently: Last December, China's President Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia and signed 34 deals covering energy, tech and transportation. Also, just last month, China and Saudi Arabia took things up a notch by finalizing a currency swap agreement.
The development: Haichang Ocean Park, which runs six parks in mainland China, is now teaming up with Saudi Arabia's TDF. It's a big deal for Haichang's global expansion plan to build an international brand and create a global “leisure and entertainment platform featuring marine culture.” This partnership started with an agreement in April between Haichang and Riyadh to build the first large-scale marine leisure park in the country. They've got ambitious plans for this collaboration, ranging from family entertainment centers to water parks, theme parks, zoos and safari parks in different Saudi cities.
Key comments:
“Acting as the development manager of the project, we aim to pioneer the development of a world-class, first-of-its-kind, integrated marine theme park resort in Saudi Arabia, which will become a fully integrated destination,” said Qu Naijie, executive director and CEO of Haichang, in the filing. “The cooperation will integrate the advantageous resources of both parties and help the group to establish an international brand and to build a worldwide leisure and entertainment platform featuring marine culture.”
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