Launched in 2013, the New Silk Road project includes an agricultural aspect that would accelerate China's food security strategy.
By creating model farms, investing and collaborating in science, Beijing is putting its influence diplomacy into practice and is especially looking for new political allies. This can be seen clearly in China’s projects in the Middle East. Relations between China and the Middle East are focused on oil and gas trade. The Middle East is China’s largest supplier. Given this reality, Beijing wants to maintain privileged links with regional powers through agricultural cooperation.
However, according to the French website areion24.news, agricultural trade between China and the Middle East is limited because there is no alliance. Therefore, China uses the "card" of technology transfer with the aim of helping countries in the region improve food security and increase agricultural production capacity. In 2015, the China-Arab Agricultural Technology Transfer Center was established in Ningxia.
In 2022, at the China-Arab Summit, Arab countries pledged to establish five joint laboratories for modern agriculture and carry out 50 pilot technical cooperation projects. From 2005 to 2017, China's total investment in Israel was $13.2 billion, of which one-third ($4.4 billion) was aimed at agriculture... It can be said that for China, the Middle East is not a region that provides the goods that Beijing is lacking, nor is it a region for them to develop agricultural exports.
China’s agricultural diplomacy is increasingly targeting the Middle East as a political target, improving its image and strengthening ties with places where Beijing’s presence remains weak, and where the Asian nation has strong commercial interests, especially in energy.
PEARL
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