China is
not the sole meaningful competitor against and alternative to the US on the global stage because the Chinese shy away from messy politics.
Angering the US by purchasing Chinese arms — that alter the regional balance of power — has been a
family tradition for the House of Saud since the 1980s, when the father and grandfather of the current Saudi ambassador to Washington arranged for the purchase of 36 Chinese IRBMs while the former occupied the very same position in DC.
From their perspective, provoking Washington by deepening ties with Beijing is akin to manipulating a lover with jealousy. Can't do it too often, but it's a known option of their foreign policy playbook.
Though at this point, the Saudis aren't too far from dumping Uncle Sam for good to be nominally single.
China is not the Soviet Union: the Chinese are not looking to replicate the path or failures of an empire that collapsed onto itself.
TBF, your concern is not unreasonable, but this is a bit of a
chicken or egg problem.
China is known to draw in "new friends," or otherwise sow the seeds for geopolitical alignment, by cultivating de facto dependencies without demanding de jure or overt commitments that risk inspiring cold feet.
Once enough dependency on your ecosystem (or supply chains) is established, they'll have to proritize you over the competition whether they want to or not.
It's
not going to be "all that easy" for the US to nerf J-35 sales to GCC countries in particular or MENA countries in general.
This isn't exactly a secret, but largely overlooked by most observers: the US has actually been fairly open to selling the F-35 to the KSA in principal.
Problem is the Americans want to sell the Saudis what would effectively be a castrated F-35 (
), while the Saudis supposedly not only want a level of access and control comparable to what the Israelis got with the F-35I Adir, but a significant degree of localization in line with the stated objectives of their
agenda:
Besides the fact that the Israel Lobby, as well as the Qataris, have been tirelessly lobbying Congress against Saudi acquisition of the F-35 for years, Lockheed is understandably reluctant about the Saudis assembling F-35 fighters themselves, and unlike the Italians or Japanese, the Saudis will need Lockheed to "go out of its way" to achieve any reasonable or respectable level of localization.
OTOH, CATIC — which is the AVIC subsidiary principally responsible for exporting Chinese military aircraft — openly markets its
and
exporting assembly lines and manufacturing capacity, with a level of ToT that'd be unimaginable with Lockheed.
If the Saudis are to acquire a 5th gen fighter in meaningful numbers — on their terms or something close to it before 2035 — a Chinese J-35 derivative is realistically speaking
the only game in town.
