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Wen丨Xiaofei is a little annoyed
Editor丨Xiaofei is a little annoyed
Preface
Speaking of Saudi Arabia, everyone will definitely be familiar with it, this is a very rich country, everyone will often brush their news on the Internet and short video platforms, everyone is a local tyrant, or a country with a large oil producer, so what is the development and history of their country?
According to the relevant news, Saudi Arabia is a male-dominated country, a country has thousands of princes, and the amount of oil reserves can reach hundreds of billions of barrels.
History of Tsarist Arabia
"I am the richest in the world with a piece of cloth on my head" is an overstatement to describe Saudi Arabia as a country with an area of 2.25 million square kilometers, located on the Arabian Peninsula in southwest Asia, and the whole country is dominated by Islam (the state religion of Saudi Arabia).
Saudi Arabia is still very advantageous in terms of geographical location, close to the Persian Gulf in the east, and the Red Sea in the west, bordering countries such as Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Qatar and other countries, the capital of their country is Riyadh, according to the latest statistics this year, there are a total of 32.18 million people, and the whole country has 13 provinces.
Beginning in the seventh century AD, the heirs of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, formally founded the Arab Empire, and by the eighth century, the Arab Empire was at its most powerful, and even had its own territories on three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa at its largest, and lasted until the eleventh century before slowly declining.
In the 16th century, the Arab Empire was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for three centuries until the 19th century, when it was invaded by the British, and after the British invasion, it was divided into two parts: Najd and Hejaz.
Then we look to the twenties of the twentieth century (1924), when a man named Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud annexed the Hejaz and proclaimed himself king, gradually ruled the Arabian Peninsula after the war, and officially established the state on September 23, 1932.
After the establishment of the state, they named the country the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and it was at this time that Saudi Arabia officially appeared in our sight, but after the official establishment of the state, it is still very much Islamic, and it makes more than five visits a year, and the whole country also attaches great importance to this.
In their words, this kind of worship means worship, as long as it is time to worship God, people will put down everything in their hands and go to the temple or the street to worship sincerely, and the state has also required this, that is, when worshipping God, whether it is a store, a mall or a bank restaurant, it must be closed.
There are two very important festivals in the country of Saudi Arabia, namely Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr, as long as these two festivals come, believers from all over the world will try to come to the holy city of Mecca for pilgrimage, on that day people will wear a uniform (white robe) and worship many times.
In addition to these two festivals, there is also a month called "Ramadan", as long as it is this month, people are not allowed to consume food during the day, even smoking is not allowed, but the time is only during the day, and at night people will appear in the streets and alleys are very lively, which is equivalent to the Spring Festival and New Year's Day in the mainland.
However, in Saudi Arabia, you don't have to worry about the usual security and theft problems, because their country is a religious country, take stealing as an example, as long as you are caught stealing in Saudi Arabia, there will be a religious system to punish you, such as public street parades, whipping, and even the most serious time will be chopped off.
And in Saudi Arabia, it is basically a man's world, and the status of women in this country is still very low, and they can't even go out by themselves, they can't enter the temple to worship, they can't drive or communicate with strangers, and they have to bring a black cloth when they go out, but they can still study.
It may be because they have to wear black clothes all year round, women in Saudi Arabia generally have very white and tender skin, but people can't see it, except for the husband and wife who go out together, they can't go out alone, here Saudi women can only marry locals, and they can't betray their husbands for life.
Saudi Arabia's multifaceted development
For Saudi Arabia, although they cannot be regarded as a large country with a large population in the Gulf region, their country's industrial development is very advanced, and it can be said to be an "industrial power" in the world, not to mention the oil industry and petrochemical industry, in addition to these, they have other more advanced developments.
The first thing to mention is Saudi Arabia's fertilizer, plastics and steel industries, these industries are more cutting-edge in Saudi Arabia's industrial scope, among which SABIC is Saudi Arabia's chemical flagship enterprise, not only in the scope of Asia, but also in the world's top five.
Saudi Arabia is still relatively short of water resources in the whole country, and it is precisely for this reason that Saudi Arabia still invests in large-scale desalination projects, with a total investment of tens of billions of dollars, and has invested in a lot of desalination plants in the whole country, and the development is relatively advanced, becoming the most powerful desalination country in the world.
With the development of Saudi Arabia, the whole country is no longer full of deserts and wastelands as at the beginning, and has gradually become green farmland and forests, but all this is inseparable from the economic development of Saudi Arabia.
The state of the economy in Saudi Arabia
Since the beginning of the last century, Saudi Arabia has been developing its own economy, and they have developed in many ways by relying on their rich oil resources.
When the time came to 2018, Saudi Arabia's annual GDP could reach about 850 billion US dollars, and this data alone surpassed all Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey, and became the richest country in the Middle East, even reaching the combined economies of Iran and Israel.
Even if Saudi Arabia's economy is placed within the scope of the mainland, it can easily reach the top few provinces in the mainland (2018), because the GDP of Guangdong Province, which ranks first, can reach 9,727.777 billion yuan in 2018 (about 136.96 million US dollars when converted into US dollars), which is relatively close to the GDP of Zhejiang Province in the mainland (5,619.715 billion yuan, 780.8 billion US dollars).
Of course, we can't just look at the economic calculation of GDP, because this is only the country's GDP in that year, and Saudi Arabia has hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves just for foreign exchange, for example, in 2022, Saudi Arabia has $434.88 billion in foreign exchange reserves.
And Saudi Arabia also has the world's second-largest oil company (Aramco), with a market value of $1.7 trillion, which is not much lower than Microsoft and Apple in the United States, and Saudi Arabia's faux pas can be seen from here, and in May 2022, Saudi Aramco companies have surpassed Apple in the United States in the stock market and are the largest companies in the world by market capitalization.
epilogue
Although it is a bit inappropriate to compare Saudi Arabia with some provinces on the mainland, this is also to let everyone know more clearly what Saudi Arabia is in terms of GDP, and in 2022, Saudi Arabia's GDP has exceeded one trillion US dollars.
In the process of future development, Saudi Arabia's economy may be higher and higher, but the development of the same continent will also get better and better, and the relationship between the mainland and Saudi Arabia is also relatively good, and they may develop together in some fields in the future.
Resources:
Saudi Arabian Economic Net - National Economic Development Report and Outlook 2018
China Economic Net - "2018 GDP Data and Ranking of National Provinces"
Saudi Aramco – 2019 Corporate External Report
Saudi Aramco – Aramco Update 2022