Digital Rivalry and Strategic Alignment: The Gulf’s Geopolitical Transformation Under China’s Digital Silk Road

This paper analyzes the strategic competition between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) through the lens of Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT). It moves beyond conventional geoeconomic analysis to argue that the DSR is a transformative external input reshaping the security architecture of the Gulf. Using a qualitative, comparative case study, the paper demonstrates how the DSR’s “penetration” into the region has created a new, securitized domain of rivalry. Within this digital sphere, both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi engage in status-seeking behavior characteristic of a middle power rivalry, leveraging Chinese technology to advance competing visions of regional leadership. This competition has introduced new referent objects of security — such as data sovereignty and technological standard-setting — and compelled both states to recalibrate their strategic alignments between the United States and China. The findings reveal that Gulf states are not passive recipients of great power influence but active agents instrumentalizing digital infrastructure to reorder regional security dynamics. The study contributes a theoretical explanation of how digital geopolitics has become a central axis of security competition, transforming the Gulf from an energy corridor into a digitally integrated and contested multipolar crossroads.