Author | Li Xiaotian
Edit | weber
The per capita GDP ranks among the top five in the world, the unemployment rate remains at 0.13%, the world's three authoritative credit rating agencies all give an "AA" sovereign credit rating, and ranks among the top 10 safest countries in the Global Peace Index (GPI) ranking.
Taken together, this information is reminiscent of European countries such as Denmark, Norway, Switzerland; But in fact, this is the current economic and social situation of Qatar, a Middle Eastern country located on the coast of the Persian Gulf.
Before the 22nd FIFA World Cup, few people paid attention to the Gulf state, which is slightly smaller than Tianjin, China, on the international political and economic map. But on November 20, 2022, Qatar made history by bringing the world's most watched sporting event to the Arab and Muslim world for the first time in history, and also spotted the world's attention on the country that spent more than $200 billion to host the "most expensive" World Cup in history.
A view of Doha, the capital of Qatar
The preparation and hosting of this international event has profoundly changed Qatar's infrastructure, economic structure and social landscape, and has become a crucial milestone in Qatar's national transformation strategy "National Vision 2030".
Regarding the development opportunities and prospects of Qatar in the post-World Cup era, Si Junji, director of Greater China at Invest Qatar, told Xiaguang: "When people mention Qatar, they generally think that the country's biggest advantage is its unique natural gas reserves and stable natural gas exports. But in my opinion, its uniqueness lies in the fact that the stability of the energy economy has made the country have a very perfect development foundation and business environment, combined with Qatar's transformation vision of economic diversification, which is a good time for Qatar itself and for overseas enterprises. ”
Today, in Doha, the capital of Qatar, the traces of the World Cup are everywhere you look: huge posters of football stars such as Lionel Messi show that it once hosted the largest sporting event in the history of the Middle East; The World Cup mascot la'eeb is a souvenir of the country in duty-free shops at the airport, Qatar's seven stadiums built for the World Cup are now sports and entertainment hubs for the local community, and Doha's metro and tram services, the expanded Doha International Airport and the cruise terminal port complete the country's public transport system.
Celebrity posters at Qatar airports
In 2022, the quadrennial global sports event arrived in the Middle East for the first time in its nearly 100-year history, and the most visible boost to Qatar's tourism industry is obvious: 1.18 million international tourists traveled to Qatar from November to December during the World Cup; In the post-World Cup era, Qatar's tourism boom continues unabated – in 2023, Qatar welcomed more than 4 million visitors, a five-year all-time high. Qatar Tourism plans to increase the number of tourists to 6 million by 2030, and tourism's contribution to GDP will climb from the current 7% to 12%.
In addition to boosting Qatar's tourism industry, Qatar spent $300 billion on public transportation, restaurants, hotels, and public art projects during preparations for the World Cup. After the games, these infrastructure projects have become a solid cornerstone for the rapid development of the country's cultural tourism, trade, finance and other industries, thus promoting Qatar's transformation from an energy-based country to a service-oriented country.
Si Junjie felt that before and after the World Cup, Qatar has undergone very significant changes at two levels: one is infrastructure, and the other is the social landscape.
"Before the World Cup, Qatar was very much like Saudi Arabia now, with only taxis, and the subway and bus were very imperfect; Today, Qatar has a robust public transport system, no major infrastructure projects in the core urban area, a large number of five-star hotels with a high level of service, and orderly and uncongested urban traffic, which has significantly improved the country's overall modernization level. In addition, in terms of social outlook, the country already has experience in hosting large-scale international events and hosting international tourists, and the level of openness and secularization has made it possible for non-Muslim residents to live comfortably here. ”
Qatar's skyscrapers
The World Cup has also reshaped Qatar's international image and popularity. As Al Jazeera, an international media outlet based in Doha, put it: "Hosting the World Cup is the best example of a country's soft power, opening a window into the world and showing how new infrastructure can make Qatar a great place to invest or do business." The World Cup is about pride, honour and publicity, not making money. ”
Looking back at Qatar's national history, pearling was the backbone of Qatar's livelihood in the middle of the last century, before the discovery of oil and gas. Traces of pearling culture are still preserved in Doha's cityscape: a public artwork is housed in Doha's manicured Corniche Old Harbour, a giant concrete mussel shell that opens wide to reveal one of the round pearls.
In 1939, BP first discovered oil resources in the Dohan area in the western part of the Qatar peninsula, with proven reserves of 25.2 billion barrels, a far cry from Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of 297.5 billion barrels; It wasn't until the discovery of natural gas in 1971 that the small Middle Eastern country had a real economic lifeline – in the same year that Qatar declared its independence from British rule, huge gas reserves were discovered in the vast waters of the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Iran: the world's largest gas reserve, the "North Nampas" gas field.
In terms of natural gas reserves, Qatar is second only to Russia and Iran; In terms of export volume, in 2022, Qatar will become the world's largest LNG exporter with 80 million tons of exports. In recent years, Qatar has further stepped up the development and export of natural gas resources, making it a top priority for economic development: in March 2024, Qatar's energy minister Saad al-Kabi announced plans to increase production capacity by another 13% on the basis of previous projects, and by 2030, Qatar's LNG production will increase from the current 77 million tons per year to 142 million tons, most of which will be used for exports, basically on a par with the oil exports of Saudi Arabia, the energy giant in the Middle East.
Qatar's abundant energy reserves have also made it one of the richest countries in the world. According to the World Bank, Qatar's per capita GDP reached $87,661.5 in 2022, 1.15 times that of the United States and much higher than the two Gulf powers, the United Arab Emirates (53,708.0) and Saudi Arabia (30,447.9).
Wang Xiangru, a person who runs a TikTok live broadcast guild and e-commerce business in the Gulf countries of the Middle East, told Xiaguang Agency: "From the perspective of the amount of live broadcast tips, among the Gulf countries, Qatari users are the most generous, and big R players (R refers to RMB, that is, players who spend a lot of money on virtual products) can tip more than 100,000 US dollars for a PK match; However, from the perspective of the unit price of e-commerce shoppers, the UAE is the highest, and the data of Qatar is average, the reason behind it is that most of Qatar's spending power are its own citizens, and the proportion of its own citizens is too small, and the largest proportion of the population structure is foreign workers. ”
Wang Xiangru's observation truly reflects Qatar's demographic structure and the gap between the rich and the poor. Of Qatar's 2.79 million people, only 11.6% are nationals, and the rest are foreign workers, with India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Egypt accounting for the largest proportion. According to the World Inequality Database, the Middle East is the region with the largest gap between rich and poor in the world, and Qatar is particularly striking, with the top 10% of the country's population having 29 times more wealth than the bottom 50%.
Foreign workers can be found everywhere in Qatar
Qatar's own citizens live a prosperous life due to the resource rentals generated by oil and gas, but rentier countries often fall into the quagmire of the "resource curse". As stated in Qatar: A Modern History: "There is a broad assumption in political economy that a country's wealth depends on its natural resources, at best it is a mixed blessing, and at worst it is a curse on the country's economy, an almost impenetrable roadblock to democratization." Rentier countries often suffer from 'Dutch disease', a sudden outbreak of inflation that leads to the collapse of non-oil manufacturing and commerce, a name derived from the stagnation of the Dutch economy after the exploitation of oil reserves. ”
In response to the global trend of fossil fuels switching to clean energy, Qatar launched the "National Vision 2030" as early as 2008, aiming to diversify its economy and build Qatar into an advanced society that can sustainably develop and provide a high standard of life for its people by 2030.
In the context of the global energy transition, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the three richest countries in the Gulf region, have all launched their own economic transformation visions, but the three Gulf countries are by no means a zero-sum game, but a win-win ecology that complements each other and coexists organically. This is supported by IMF figures: more than a million tourists arrived in Qatar during the World Cup in Qatar, of which 300,000 stayed in neighboring countries to commute to Qatar using shuttle flights, a very clear regional economic spillover effect that drove the tourism industry throughout the Middle East.
Qatar's path to transformation is similar to that of other Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, which is to use energy revenues to expand its sovereign wealth fund, and then diversify its investment to drive industrial development and reduce its dependence on energy. However, compared with Saudi Arabia, which has a vast territory of 2.25 million square kilometers and a population of more than 30 million, Qatar, which has a land area of only 1/200 of Saudi Arabia and a population of less than 3 million, is a veritable small country. In this regard, Si Junjie believes that it is precisely because of the small market size in Qatar that it will be very focused at the policy level and the implementation level, "knowing more about what you can do and what you want to do." ”
Doha's Corniche
Compared with other Gulf countries, Qatar is particularly unique in its shaping and improvement of national soft power such as education, media, and diplomacy. The book Qatar: A Modern History says: "In a typical rentier state, the rulers used the oil wealth to pacify and control, while the rulers of Qatar used the oil wealth to encourage and push Qatar's traditional tribes towards globalization. In Saudi Arabia, the reformers of the ruling family are bound by their own alliance with Wahhabi religious scholars, while the rulers of Qatar are able to experiment with a variety of open and challenging educational, media, and diplomatic measures. ”
In the field of education, on the outskirts of Doha, the capital of Qatar, lies a 12-square-kilometer education park, and seven Qatari campuses of elite foreign universities, including Cornell University, Georgetown University and Northwestern University, have been established; In the field of media, Qatar has the most influential international news organization in the Arab world, "Al Jazeera", which not only shows Qatar's views on regional and international affairs, but also deeply affects the international community's perception of Arab countries. In terms of diplomatic strategy, the cartel has sought to defuse regional conflicts by positioning itself as a mediator, and more recently its mediation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has won international acclaim, serving as a model for small states to maintain their independence in complex and volatile geopolitical relations.
On the road to economic diversification and transformation, Qatar has not completely copied the "Dubai model". In this regard, Si Junjie told Xiaguang Agency: "Qatar's secularization is not 'all the way west' like Dubai, but shows its adherence to Islamic culture in all aspects. Qatar's young people are highly educated and actually very open-minded, but Islamic culture has a profound influence on their values and behavior. For example, Abu Dhabi rents collections from French museums in imitation of the Louvre, which is modeled after the French replica, and is attracted by foreign tourists. Qatar chose to hire I.M. Pei to create the Museum of Islamic Art, which presents Islamic-style architecture and collects and preserves Islamic art from around the world. ”
I.M. Pei's Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar
Although the Qatari market is small, its ultra-high per capita GDP level and location advantages in the Gulf region make the country still have ample potential for exploration.
Taking the e-commerce industry as an example, Si Junjie shared that one development path is that overseas brands can accurately meet the consumption needs of the local population, "Some domestic brands customize high-end women's shoes and women's bags for the Qatari market, and the unit price is very high. And the high-spending power group is very focused in Qatar, unlike the United Arab Emirates, where there are expatriates from all over the world, and the consumer group of the same level is very scattered; It's also not like in Saudi Arabia, where logistics clearance, last-mile delivery and online payments are not perfect. ”
Another development path, e-commerce platforms can take advantage of Qatar's location and use Qatar as a radiation point to cover other Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain by sea, land and air. "Many European and American e-commerce platforms have already made such a layout in Qatar."
In addition to sports events, e-sports, clean energy, biomedicine, financial technology, smart logistics, smart agriculture, and AI chips are the focus of Qatar's "National Vision 2030", and they are also areas that Qatar is willing to cooperate with Chinese enterprises in depth.
For example, Qatar has become a key market in the wave of China's new energy vehicles going overseas to the Middle East. During the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the "green fleet" composed of more than 800 pure electric buses produced by China Yutong Company was particularly eye-catching; After the end of the World Cup, Yutong electric buses did not "retire", but became an important part of Qatar's public transportation system.
In its transformation strategy, National Vision 2030, the Government of Qatar has made it clear that it will gradually convert public transport buses, public school buses and metro feeder bus services to electric buses by 2030, and that the public transport system will be 100% electrified. China, which has an indisputable leading edge in the new energy vehicle industry, has become the only supplier of electric buses in Qatar. At present, Qatar's pure electric buses account for 80% of its total number of buses, and all pure electric buses are made in China.
Doha at night
The 2022 year of the Qatar World Cup is also a very important time node for the new energy vehicle industry in the Middle East. In this year, China's new energy vehicle companies accelerated their entry into the Middle East, driving the start of the electric vehicle industry in Middle Eastern countries.
According to market research firm Mordor Intelligence, the Middle East and Africa electric vehicle market was valued at $40.25 million in 2021; This figure is expected to reach $93.1 million by 2027, growing at a CAGR of more than 15%.
On September 28, 2023, Geely's high-end electric vehicle brand Zeekr signed an agreement with four top car dealers in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to jointly build a sales and service network in four Middle Eastern countries. In October 2023, in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where the temperature is scorching at 40 degrees Celsius, the Geneva International Motor Show, which has been interrupted for three years due to the epidemic, will reopen. On April 28, BYD, the leading brand of China's new energy vehicles, held a brand conference in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and launched five new energy vehicle models, named Yuan PLUS (known as BYD ATTO 3 overseas), Seal, Han, Qin PLUS DM-i and Song PLUS DM-i.
The boom of overseas factory construction of Chinese new energy vehicle companies rooted in the world has also realized the two-way rush with Qatar's vision of green energy transformation. As early as November 2020, Yutong Bus signed a framework agreement with the Qatar Free Zone Authority (QFZA) to cooperate in the establishment and operation of an electric bus factory to produce electric buses for the World Cup, thereby promoting the electrification of urban transportation.
According to the agreement, Yutong's electric buses in Qatar will not only serve the needs of the domestic market in Qatar, but will also be exported to the Middle East, Europe, South America and Africa. Qatar aims to become a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles in the Middle East by improving the EV industry chain cluster.
In addition to partnering with Chinese automakers to build factories, Qatar has set up its first electric vehicle company, Ecotranzit, to accelerate its country's ambitions in the field of electric vehicles, plans to design and manufacture its own electric vehicles in the future, and has begun to invest in assembly plants and preliminary production lines. On June 5, 2023, Ecotranzit officially launched VIM, an electric vehicle brand with independent intellectual property rights, and showcased its three models of electric vehicles. According to Arabian Gulf Business Insight, a business information outlet for the Middle East and North Africa region, Ecotranzit's partners include China-based Beijing Automobile Factory.
In this regard, Si Junjie believes that if you simply export cars, the Qatari market is indeed very limited; However, if car companies like Yutong come to Qatar to build assembly plants, build charging ecology, improve the upstream and downstream industrial chain, and then drive the development of the local new energy industry, there will be more room for development.
"What kind of overseas companies are suitable to come to Qatar to find opportunities? If you give a general portrait, you basically need to meet these four points: first, the company can rely on the local market in Qatar to make money, which is a prerequisite; Second, the enterprise is willing to make money with local capital in the form of joint ventures or investments; Third, the technology or solutions brought by enterprises can greatly improve the local ecology; Fourth, the business model is regionally replicable, and this region does not necessarily refer to Middle Eastern countries, but can also be African and Central Asian countries in which Qatar invests. In fact, the Qatari government hopes to cooperate with Chinese enterprises, and on the premise that the business model of the enterprise itself is in line with the diversified development needs of Qatar's economy, based on the local ecology such as Qatari investors and landing parks, it will jointly create a set of solutions around the local market demand. Si Junjie shared.
In the wave of economic diversification and transformation of the Gulf countries, Qatar, with its good business environment and great vitality, is bringing huge investment and development opportunities to Chinese enterprises.
The National Museum of Qatar, known as the "Desert Rose".