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The article provides an account of Saudi Arabia's "look east" trade policy. Topics discussed include strengthening of Saudi Arabia's diplomatic ties with India and China in 2006 under its previous king Abdullah, export of oil, development of renewable energy, and economic diversification, and high oil exports from Saudi Arabia in 2013.

While China's relations with Arab states have been studied by many, Taiwan's relations with them have hardly been investigated. This study takes Saudi Arabia as a case study and examines the development of Taiwanese-Saudi relations in the period between 1949 and 2013, comparing them to Chinese-Saudi relations. The Taiwanese-Saudi formal diplomatic relationship lasted for over four decades until 1990 and was longer than any other Taiwanese-Arab formal relationship. Even after Saudi Arabia's normalization with China, Taiwan has maintained substantial economic, social, and cultural relations with Saudi Arabia on an informal basis, which have shown signs of reinvigoration in recent years. This long Taiwanese-Saudi "honeymoon" was previously seen from the Cold War perspective. Nevertheless, the anti-Communism factor alone is not sufficient for explaining the course of the development of Taiwanese/Chinese-Saudi relations. This article adds three factors to the analysis - (1) Islam; (2) energy; and (3) development - and revisits those two bilateral relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]