He is the One Who sends the winds ushering in His mercy. Then, when they bear heavy clouds, We drive them to a lifeless land and send down rain, producing fruits of every kind. Similarly, We will bring the dead to life—so perhaps you will be mindful. As for the good land, it yields an abundant produce by the permission of its Lord. But as for the bad land, it yields nothing but misery. This is how We vary the signs for people who are grateful.

Off the coast of the Red Sea, glass pods, half-submerged in the sea, bob on the tide. The surfaces of some are covered with algae; connected with fiberoptic cables, they host an underwater data center, the “city brain” of NEOM. It’s far too hot to go outside, and nobody does—not that there are that many people living here anyway. Burrows in the ground are coated with solar panels; their surfaces are made of adaptive glass that regulates temperature and energy use. A few kilometers inland is a community for the engineers who manage the data center. Desalinated water has made this neighborhood, enclosed within a dome, green; it is populated by African expats who commute between the KSA and the continent, spreading a consumer gospel.

When Saudi’s venture capital fund, PIF, invested in Chinese companies, it did so thinking to import the Chinese model of economic development that engendered social stability, stabilizing the Ummah. Surveillance companies, new energy companies, e-commerce companies. The Chinese model had brought a fraught empire to peace and prosperity; in Saudi Arabia, the prince who would build a caliphate adopted it, unfurling it across the Middle East. Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut—places that had once conjured a sense of ancient civilizations and then became synonyms for chaos and war—are now air-conditioned provincial capitals. Autonomous vehicles of various kinds glide through the sand, their routes optimized by AI traffic and weather systems made in partnership with Chinese tech giants. Across the desert, in Riyadh, an aging Mohammed bin Salman rules over a nouveau caliphate. The new technologies have sewn the chaotic Arab world together. But it is unbearably hot.

In the late 2020s, facing the dual pressures of declining oil reliance and a youthful population demanding economic opportunity, Saudi Arabia made a bold strategic pivot. Rather than relying solely on Western partnerships, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman deepened ties with China, embracing its advancements in artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and smart infrastructure. The Vision 2030 plan, once seen as ambitious, now became reality—supercharged by Chinese expertise. This wasn’t that hard; after the trade negotiations between the Americans and Chinese ended in 2027, even the Americans started accepting Chinese tech transfer. They protested weakly when others did, but nobody listened much.

NEOM, the futuristic megacity, became the crown jewel of this collaboration. Built with Chinese 5G networks, quantum computing hubs, and AI-driven public services, it attracted tech talent from across the region. Huawei’s cloud infrastructure underpins everything from healthcare diagnostics to autonomous logistics, while Chinese-backed solar farms in the desert power entire cities, turning Saudi Arabia into a green energy exporter. Much of this energy is used for air-conditioning; most people in the region live permanently indoors now.

Saudi Arabia’s success became a blueprint for the region. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) adopted Riyadh’s tech policies, integrating Chinese digital payment systems and smart trade corridors. The once oil-dependent economies of the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait now thrive on knowledge-based industries, with Riyadh as their financial and technological nexus.

Even geopolitical tensions have eased. With economic interdependence growing, Saudi Arabia and Iran have found common ground in tech partnerships, codeveloping AI-driven water desalination projects to combat regional scarcity. On the airplanes that silently descend on Jeddah for the hajj, Indonesians, Muslims from across Western Europe, and Pakistanis take comfort in the pools of clean water waiting for them: the holy land.