As Bridging the Gulf goes to press, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping is preparing for a December trip to Riyadh, where he will meet crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and hold a summit with Arab leaders. Washington will watch with rapt attention—and fear—but with little understanding of the scope and limits of China’s Middle East ambitions. In this volume, Lucille Greer provides the historical and strategic background U.S. policymakers badly need. Since Xi launched its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, there has been a steady stream of scholarly research on China’s activities in Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, and, more recently, Central Asia. Scant attention has been given to China’s burgeoning relations in the Middle East, however, despite China’s growing assertiveness there and the fact that it buys more of the region’s oil than any other nation and consumes more than twice as much as the United States.