Some years ago, a document circulated at the Ministry of Trade and Industry which suggested that Saudi Arabia needed to change its trading alliances, away from its traditional partners — the US, Europe and Japan — to China and India as well as South Africa, Brazil and Russia.

The idea was that Saudi Arabia should be less dependent on trade with the West. That has now happened. However, Saudi Arabia’s much talked about “Look East” policy was neither the result of a decision to implement the document which, like most such papers, was politely read and quietly forgotten, nor was it consciously pursued.

Indeed it must be asked whether there has been a conscious policy. There is a powerful argument that Saudi Arabia is merely doing what everyone else, the US and Europe included, is doing: trading heavily with India, China, and the rest of the Far East because it is good business.

Indian, Chinese and other Far Eastern products and services are cheap, well made and easily available.

For everyone, looking East is not a policy but rather it is economic common sense. Saudi Arabia’s growing trade with the East has grabbed public attention in the Kingdom. The visits of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to China, India, Pakistan and Malaysia are seen as symbolizing a change in the country’s relationships, largely because they were the first he made after ascending the throne. In fact the change was already happening.

What the king’s visit at the beginning of last year certainly did was to provide a dynamic impetus to trade with China, India and Malaysia and, by extension, the rest of Asia. Since the royal visit to India, some 270 Saudi-Indian business deals have been struck and that trade between the two countries has increased a staggering 360 percent.

Trade and business links were growing before but not at that rate. Today, there is not a company on the Top 100 list that is not interested in the East or has not seen its growth fueled by growing Eastern contacts or business. India, China and the Far East are seen as the new commercial El Dorado. To a large extent, oil is still a driving force for this expansion — not so much for Saudi Arabia as for its partners. Their burgeoning economies need ever-increasing supplies of oil and most of it comes from the Middle East with most of that from Saudi Arabia.

Asia accounts for more than half of Saudi oil, gas and petroleum product sales, but still less than a third of the Kingdom’s imports.

By contrast, Europe and the US account for over half of Saudi imports but less than a quarter of its exports.

For India, for China and other Asia countries, that could be a major headache. They feel they need to be assured of supplies. Earlier this month China asked the Kingdom for a 30-percent increase in oil supplies, from 460,000 bpd to 600,000 bpd.

In fact, Saudi Aramco has said it will supply China with 1 million bpd by 2010, so the current request is neither unexpected nor beyond what is planned. What may worry Aramco are China’s needs beyond that. Its oil requirements are expected to double within six years.

Paying for them is another issue. Faced with the enormous trade imbalance with Saudi Arabia because of oil purchases, the Asian giants understandably want to sell the Kingdom as much as they can to offset the debt.

A new economic law is in the making: The more Saudi oil they buy, the more goods and services they will try to sell to the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is a willing partner. But it is not just goods or services it wants. It is after skills and technology transfer as well — and India, China, Japan and others in the Far East have them in abundance. China, for example, is to provide the technology for one of the planned aluminum smelters in the new Jizan Economic City. As for Indian IT, which the whole world is after, there is a number of agreements under which Indian expertise is being transferred to the Kingdom — be it between the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai or deals like that between the Riyadh-based Advanced Electronics Company and HCL Technologies, the India-based global IT player, or between Sundaram Infotech Solutions, the software development and implementation arm of Chennai-based Sundaram Finance, and Microsoft for the latter’s Axapta ERP training program in Saudi Arabia.

But technology transfer is not easy. It is not simply a case of buying the computer and installing the software. The reason why countries such as India or Korea or Japan have knowledge to transfer and why they have become economic giants is down to one thing above all others: education.

Knowledge can be transferred but it will not take root without an educated work force to use and develop it further.

King Abdullah and those in authority know this — which is why so many universities such as KAUST are being built. Without education, there cannot be a knowledge-based society.

Without education, the “Look East” policy could end up being no more than a case of Saudi Arabia changing its shopping habits.