In a land enormously rich in history and in the energy that drives the machines of the modem world, men of the Republic of China are helping develop the facilities of today for one of the world's most ancient peoples. The cooperation extends into many fields, ranging from agriculture to transportation, electrification and communications. I saw something of what is being done during a recent visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The people of this huge Middle East peninsula between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea (or Persian Gulf) are descended from the Biblical patriarch Abraham through his son Ishmael, a half-brother of Isaac, the ancestor of the Hebrew peoples. According to Arabian history, Abraham was the founder of the Holy City of Mecca and builder of the Holy Shrine, the Kaaba.
This is the land that later was to become the birthplace of one of the mightiest forces of world history. An unschooled man of 40, meditating in a cave near his birthplace of Mecca in the year 610 A.D., heard the call from the Angel Gabriel to become the chosen Prophet of God. This was the man known as Mohammed. He framed into rhymed prose the moral and spiritual teachings of the Koran and founded the faith of Islam. Today Islam spreads more than halfway around the globe with an estimated nearly 540 million followers - the world's second-largest religion.
According to the Arabs, the history of this land actually dates a lot farther back than the Biblical patriarch Abraham. Adam and Eve are said to be buried at Jeddah, the Red Sea port city where my plane landed. My intention was to see some of Saudi Arabia and visit some of the Republic of China's cooperative development projects.
The Old Testament relates that God promised Ishmael he would become the father of many peoples and that his descendants would be richly rewarded. Only in this century have the riches become evident.
Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia by American petroleum explorers in 1936 - so much oil that the kingdom is estimated to contain about half of the world's known petroleum reserves. Its oil production is about 13 per cent of the world's total.
With a large income from the export of oil, the Saudi government announced in 1975 a US$140 billion five-year program to spend the money wisely. The plan calls for developing transportation, communications, education and industry, instituting an extensive public welfare program to benefit Saudi Arabia's more than 9½ million people, and modernizing the armed forces. Several foreign nations are involved.
I was a guest at Jeddah of the Republic of China's Ret-Ser Engineering Agency, an organization of retired Republic of China servicemen that is working on many major projects in Taiwan and overseas. Ret-Ser crews are involved in the building of eight of the Big Ten projects that are changing the face of Taiwan and advancing the Republic of China from a developing to a developed nation. Ret-Ser also has built housing projects and other structures for the U.S. Navy on the Pacific island of Guam, dredged the harbor of the new U.S. Navy station at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and built highways and other projects in Thailand, Indonesia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Arabia operations are Ret-Ser's biggest overseas. While Ret-Ser is the largest, it is just one of several Republic of China companies working in the Middle Eastern kingdom on different phases of the huge Five Year Plan. Other countries involved include South Korea and Japan.
Ret-Ser Engineering had about 1,200 Chinese workers in Saudi Arabia at the time of my visit and additionally employed about 800 local people. As in all countries where the agency has contracts, qualified local workers are employed first. In Saudi Arabia, in these booming times, there is no involuntary unemployment.
Ret-Ser expects to send 4,000 more workers to Saudi Arabia to work on its biggest overseas operation so far. This is a communications and electrical systems contract to be carried out in cooperation with the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, an American concern. Ret-Ser and ITT were joint low bidders on the first and second phases of the construction with an offer of US$1.4.billion. Ret-Ser will carry out construction costing US$700 million, while ITT will handle supplies and installation of equipment at a cost of US$650 million.
Ret-Ser has contracted for several Saudi Arabia road projects. Some are completed and others are under way. Accompanied by project manager Yeh Song-nien, I traveled from Jeddah on an all-day expedition to see some of the work. The journey involved travel on a completed two-lane modern road; a narrow, corkscrew mountain road built by Japanese contractors some years ago; and the route of a new road in the building. Part of the route is only surveyed and little changed from a camel and donkey trail used for centuries to serve dozens of small villages strung out for more than 87 kilometers.
The route of the completed highway extends from Jeddah some 45 miles to Mecca, which devout Moslems hope to visit at least once in their lifetimes from wherever in the world they live.
My visit to Saudi Arabia coincided with the “Haj” period of the month of Ramada on the Moslem lunar calendar. The Haj is the time of the pilgrimages and Ramada a time for fasting. The faithful eat and drink nothing between sunrise and sunset during the month. The China Airlines plane which carried me from Taipei to Jeddah was jammed with pilgrims from Indonesia who boarded the flight at Singapore. Others came from virtually all parts of the Middle East, the Far East, Africa and Southeastern Europe. I was told that the total of 1977 pilgrims to Mecca was close to 2 million, about 10 times the normal population of the Holy City.
For well over 1,000 years most pilgrims landed at Jeddah from ships, then traveled on foot the 45 miles to Mecca - often suffering severe hardship from the heat. The Saudi government has now made the pilgrimages physically much easier. A large and nearly new dormitory hotel built adjoining the Jedda airport offers overnight lodging. Special buses travel the route from Jeddah to Mecca in less than an hour. The new roads built by Chinese crews are most helpful. Work is under way on a new expressway linking the two cities.
The road I traveled with Yeh Song-nien includes a feature unique in the world - the Mecca bypass. Travelers who are not followers of Islam must be routed around the Holy City. This prohibition dates to the Prophet himself.
Even before he received the call from the Angel Gabriel, Mohammed had been outraged by idol worship practiced at the Kaaba by people who had strayed far from the faith of Abraham, its builder. In his later years, after the faith of Islam was well established throughout Arabia and beyond, Mohammed returned to Mecca from Medina, where he had fled to escape assassination. He ordered the destruction of the idols at the Kaaba and directed that unbelievers not be permitted to visit the shrine. After the Prophet's death, his followers extended the ban to the entire city of Mecca and to Medina as well and it remains to this day.
There are a few Moslems among Ret-Ser's Chinese engineers. Most are followers of Buddhism and other faiths. In building the double-lane highway to Mecca, the Ret-Ser crews stopped at the entrance to the Holy City. Engineers and workers who were Saudi Arabian, or at least Moslems, took over at that point to build the modem road into Mecca. A technical group of about a dozen Ret-Ser engineers and other experts remained on duty outside the city to offer technical advice on any problems that developed with the construction inside Mecca. The system worked very well.
The B.E.S. Engineering Corporation, a Chinese government concern, is the contractor for the first section of the Jeddah-Mecca expressway that will be completed in 1980. I visited some of the grading under way in a sand dune area near the east edge of Jeddah.
Saudi Arabia may have more oil than any other country in the world, but it is drastically short of fresh water. Available supplies come from wells with limited output and from the evaporation of sea water. Desalinization is an expensive process, even though oil for firing the furnaces is close at hand and cheap.
Plants to recover sea water are operating on both the east and west coasts of the Arabian Peninsula. The plant at Jeddah, which was completed in 1970, is the largest. It produces 20 million tons of distilled water a day. This will be increased to 50 million tons daily when expansion is completed in 1979.
The country through which we traveled was dry and dusty, with sparse vegetation of thorny trees and shrubs, brush somewhat resembling the sage and mesquite of western America, and scattered clumps of short grass. Rain seldom falls and then usually only in small amounts. But this area is verdant, I was told, compared to some of the rest of the kingdom. The southeast section is commonly called "The Empty Quarter," and is almost just that. It is a vast, forbidding land largely covered with sand dunes, nearly uninhabited and almost unexplored. Undiscovered oil deposits may underlie the sand.
There are oases, a few small streams and more groundwater in the eastern part of the peninsula. Limited agriculture is paced by the date crop.
Water is an important factor in efficient road building. The graded soil has to be wet down so it can be firmly packed. Yeh told me that this is a major problem for Ret-Ser construction crews. Some of the tank trucks hauling water to work sites must travel as far as 100 miles each way.
We stopped for tea at the sizable town of Taif in the mountains southeast of Mecca. This is the site of Ret-Ser project headquarters. Mohammed preached the newly proclaimed faith of Islam at Taif for a time before his flight to Medina - but it never became a city closed to unbelievers. Because the town is quite high in the mountains and cooler during the summer heat, one of the palaces of the King is located here. He spends some time at Taif each summer.
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To the south and west of Taif we turned off the pavement onto a secondary road which is under construction. Part of the way is little more than a trail, but our driver expertly maneuvered the car around sharp turns and up and down steep rises. At some points the grading has been finished and the road, two lanes wide, is ready for paving.
Much remains to be done, but this road is due for completion by midsummer of 1978. It will provide better transportation to Taif and Mecca for people whose families have lived for centuries along this winding trail. Most of them are herdsmen and small farmers. Their villages - made up of small stone and adobe houses obviously very old - are strung out along the road and only a mile or two apart. Larger buildings serve as mosques. Many villages are near waddis - dry river beds with wells providing water in limited amounts for household use and for irrigating corn and other vegetables.
Along this ancient road, we often saw camels grazing on the sparse shrubbery and occasionally a man leading a laden camel on the way to market. There were many small donkeys and sizable flocks of sheep and goats, some tended by robed shepherds carrying traditional crooks. These flocks had more black sheep than commonly seen in the United States. Some were white and many were multi-colored.
At one point we passed a small but modem school building, one of the symbols of the new Saudi Arabia. The government has ordered compulsory education in the belief that learning is essential to a better future. A good share of national income is allocated to various educational programs. Education is free, even at the college level. University students are provided with monthly allowances of 500 ryals, about US$140, to help meet their personal expenses. Recognizing its greatest source of national wealth, the government has established a well-regarded technical school, the College of Petroleum and Minerals, to assure the conservation and development of oil deposits.
The most recent figures showed 517,015 boys and 209,419 girls in Saudi Arabia schools below the college level and 13,034 students receiving higher education. Boys and girls are taught in separate schools. Discipline is tight. The current Five-Year Plan calls for the establishment of 845 more elementary schools and 244 intermediate schools, mainly in rural areas.
The University of Riyadh in the national capital is considered the leading college of the kingdom. It has about 5,000 students. In addition to the College of Petroleum and Minerals and several other technical schools, there are 37 religious institutes emphasizing Islamic culture, Arabic language and literature. The religious institutes enroll about 13,000 students.
Evening classes will enroll nearly 20,000 adults by 1980 to advance further the educational level of Saudi Arabia and help this ancient country play its increasingly important part in the world of today.
South and east of Taif, Ret-Ser crews are completing a new airport to serve the area, together with the access roads.
Lee Lee-yu, office engineer at Ret-Ser's Jeddah headquarters, escorted me to a quite different sort of project. Ret-Ser and a Greek firm, the Petrola Company, are joint contractors in building a new base for the Saudi Arabia Navy on the Red Sea, just south of Jeddah's busy commercial port.
Project manager Tseng Yen-yi showed us about and we had lunch with some of his crew. Tseng told me that Ret-Ser is carrying out about 60 per cent and the Greek firm 40 per cent of the naval base project, which is costing about US$118 million dollars. Ret-Ser has more than 400 men at the site, all of them from Taiwan. The Greek firm is doing the dredging and Ret-Ser the construction work.
The Ret-Ser portion includes the building of six piers on a small man-made island connected to the shore by a causeway; a separate ammunition pier, also connected by a causeway; and two jetties to protect the harbor entrance. A major part of the construction is being done with onshore casting of reinforced, pre-stressed concrete piles some hollow and filled after installation - together with pre-cast beams, deck slabs and sections of utility tunnels.
The port of Jeddah and new naval base are considerably south of the point where, according to the Old Testament, God parted the Red Sea waters so that Moses and the children of Israel could cross on dry land to the Sinai Peninsula then released the sea again to trap the pursuing Egyptian army.
Tseng and some of his crew members took me on a boat trip around the perimeter of the naval base. The Red Sea was so-named because of the tinge given to the water in some areas by tiny plant life. But at Jeddah, where I saw the waters, the Red Sea is a beautiful blue-green color.
Engineer Lee later drove me to the Jeddah headquarters of the B.E.S. Engineering Corporation. Project manager N. J. Hoe told me about some of his firm's Saudi Arabia jobs. The largest is the first section of the Jedda-Mecca Expressway, under way near his office. The cost of this section will be more than US$30 million, with completion due early in 1979. B.E.S. has about 400 skilled Chinese workers in Saudi Arabia and also employs about 400 workers from Pakistan.
B.E.S. crews are paving streets and building sewers in Jeddah. The company is negotiating for other projects.
In the capital city of Riyadh, in central Saudi Arabia, B.E.S. is building a new headquarters for the Ministry of Industry and Electricity. The Republic of China ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Hsueh Yu-chi, told me at his Jeddah office that the structure will stand as a monument to the friendship and cooperation between the two countries. The five-story structure built around a large central court will have 21,000 square meters of floor space.
Ambassador Hsueh pointed to other Sino-Saudi projects. "One of the major targets of the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in improving the living standards of the people is providing sufficient power supplies," he said.
Saudi Arabians and Chinese work together cooperatively to build highways in difficult desert terrain.(File photo)
A major step toward this goal is a contract with the Taiwan Power Company to build a new power plant and transmission lines in the Baha area some 400 kilometers southeast of Jeddah. The cost will be more than US$135 million. First power production is due by mid-1979 and completion by early 1980.
More cooperative projects and increased trade are in prospect as the result of a four-day conference of officials of the two nations in Riyadh last spring.
The Republic of China sent a crew of telephone cable splicers and troubleshooters to Saudi Arabia to improve the kingdom's communications system. The countries agreed to use the existing satellite circuits after peak loads.
There will be further discussions on developing railroads, additional harbors, airports and other facilities.
Chinese data processing experts who visited Saudi Arabia recommended computerization of the Saudi taxation system. The recommendations are being carried out.
Saudi Arabia has loaned the Republic of China US$110 million to help finance economic developments, including the Taiwan North-South Freeway and electrification of the Taiwan railway system.
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The kingdom imported 70,000 tons of sugar and 150,000 tons of cement from the Republic of China in 1977 and increasing imports are expected. Saudi Arabia will import large amounts of fresh and frozen vegetables during the winter harvest seasons, when production is at its height in Taiwan.
The Republic of China currently buys 20,000 barrels of Saudi Arabia oil each day. The amount may be increased.
The Sino-Tech Engineer Consultants, a relatively new firm, is designing three industrial parks to encourage development of various enterprises in the Saudi Arabian cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.
Chinese teams are aiding the development of Saudi agriculture, particularly in the eastern section of the kingdom. Other joint ventures under way include a fertilizer plant and a sugar refinery designed to produce 100,000 tons of sugar a year.
Chinese fishery experts are joining the Agricultural Research Center in Jeddah as advisers.
One of the world's four greatest food crops rice - is thriving in an inhospitable environment thanks to the application of Chinese know-how.
Few crops can produce more food than rice on a given area of land, provided growing conditions are favorable. Most of Saudi Arabia is a desert and inhospitable to rice, a grain that prefers a warm, moist climate. Rice cultivation requires large amounts of water and this is scarcer than oil in most of the kingdom. However, there are large oases and a number of small streams and other sources of water in parts of Saudi Arabia's eastern section. The Chinese agricultural group headed by Lin Shih-tung is helping make the best use of these water resources.
The team is working with Saudi farmers in the Hofuf Al-Hassa District. About 20 Chinese agronomists and other technicians serve under Lin. I was told there are four main objectives:
-Improvement of rice planting methods and identification of the best varieties.
-Determination of the most suitable season for rice planting in the eastern part of the country.
-Introduction of suitable farm machinery.
-Experimentation with different fruits and vegetables in the continuing search for those that will thrive and produce under desert conditions.
Plans call for sending more agricultural teams to Saudi Arabia during 1978, especially to the Qassim and Asir areas.
Experience in the Hofuf District indicates that spring is the most suitable planting season. The harvest of last spring's crop yielded around five tons per hectare (2½ acres) of rice. This was more than double the amount obtained from previous summer plantings. Both the Chinese technicians and officials seeking to make Saudi Arabia as self-sufficient as possible in food production are very happy with the results.
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The Republic of China's International Technical Cooperation Program started in 1961. The first mission was sent to the West Africa republic of Liberia. Since then more than 2,000 technicians have gone abroad. The cooperating countries are distributed through Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
The nature and forms of technical cooperation vary with the conditions and needs of the countries involved, a spokesman for the program said. Generally, there are four main purposes: (1) to increase production of food crops by applying modern, practical methods; (2) to develop special crops suited to local conditions; (3) to promote such projects as handicrafts, sugar manufacturing and fish culture to aid the economy as well as the food supplies of the cooperating countries; and (4) to experiment with plant breeding to develop varieties suited to local conditions.
The projects are strictly cooperative. The Chinese technicians often learn from local farmers who have contended with the environment all their lives. In addition to the work overseas, limited numbers of young farmers from cooperating countries have been brought to Taiwan each year for periods of instruction and training.
Growing rice in the desert was first undertaken by Chinese teams in the North African state of Libya. In this country, as in parts of eastern Saudi Arabia, there is a twofold problem. Irrigation water is in short supply and much of the soil available for cultivation contains excessive amounts of salt. It is necessary to leach as much salt as possible from the soil through drainage ditches before rice cultivation and the growth of other crops can proceed.
With salt leaching, irrigation and fertilization, rice grew at last from the sands of Libya. The yield is more than 4,000 kilograms (two metric tons) per hectare.
The Libyan desert rice production project has been turned over to local people. This is the case with all International Technical Cooperation Service operations as soon as they are running smoothly. The Libyan government subsequently asked for assistance with medical services. At last report, the International Cooperation agency had 54 doctors, nurses and other medical technicians at Libyan hospitals and clinics in more remote desert regions.
In addition to Libya, Chinese agricultural and technical missions are operating in the African countries of Ivory Coast, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland; in Central America in Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Guatemala; in South America in Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Colombia; in the Caribbean in the Dominican Republic and Haiti; in Southeast Asia in Indonesia; and in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia. There have been negotiations for cooperative projects in Oman, a neigboring country of Saudi Arabia on the Arabian Peninsula.
Cooperation between the Republic of China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in agriculture began in 1962. A new five-year agreement was signed in Riyadh in December, 1976, and at Taipei in February of 1977.
The Chinese Agricultural Technical Mission is providing technical advice for projects selected by the Saudi government. It is sharing experiences with Saudi counterparts and introducing from the Republic of China small agricultural implements suitable for use under the farming conditions of Saudi Arabia and training Saudis in their use and maintenance and the modification of equipment required by conditions that are different from those of Taiwan. The Chinese will undertake introduce and improve new crops that are feasible for Saudi Arabia.
The success of rice production in 1977, doubling that of previous summer plantings, is attributed in large part to the development of new rice strains called Sipi and NTU. They actually had yields as high as eight tons per hectare, or about three times that of the usual summer rice crops in the area, with an average of about five tons. The trials were carried out on farms of eight Saudi Arabians who donated use of pieces of their land for experimental plantings of the new rice strains in areas where irrigation water was the most plentiful.
In addition to work with rice, the Chinese technicians are helping develop higher yielding vegetables that are more resistant to heat, salt in the soil and various plant diseases and insects to be found in Saudi Arabia.
Trials were carried out in 1977 on 35 varieties of a family of vegetables called "cucurbits."
These included different kinds of gourds, seven varieties of cantaloupes, nine of cucumbers and 15 of watermelons.
Sixty-five varieties of tomato seed were obtained from the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center in Taiwan and nine more from foreign and local sources in the search for plants that have the best heat and drought tolerance, resistance to soil salinity and to diseases and insect pests. As in all warm countries, Saudi Arabia has a shortage of fresh vegetables during the summer season, when the demand is greatest.
Ten varieties of imported cabbage were planted in plots to test their adaptability to high temperatures and salty soil. Test plantings were made of such other vegetables as onions, leeks, eggplant, peppers and Chinese cabbage.
More than 200 Saudi farmers, together with representatives of agricultural agencies and government, attended two field days held in June, 1977, under the sponsorship of the Hofuf Agricultural Research Center, the Extension Department of the Hassa Irrigation and Drainage Authority and the Chinese Agricultural and Technical Mission. The visitors were impressed by the results of the rice culture and development program and by the demonstration of a rice harvesting combine and a rice mill from Taiwan. The researchers also reported:
-Two varieties of cucumbers from Japan were found promising for early maturity and high yields. One kind produced fruit only 45 days after planting of the seed.
-Three varieties of cantaloupes developed in Taiwan produced high yields of excellent table quality.
-Three varieties of cabbage from Japan proved heat tolerant and grew through the entire summer season when other types would not grow.
-With hybrid seeds developed in Taiwan, at least one variety of "seedless" watermelon could become a new commercial crop for Saudi Arabia.
Food production in the desert of such a water short land as Saudi Arabia will remain a major problem. But with the cooperation of the Chinese Agricultural Technical Mission, crops are being grown and the future looks even better.
As Ambassador Hsueh said, "The future of cooperation between our two countries is brighter than ever before."