by Daniel Lorber
MONDAQ - 20 February 2017
China has a long-held reputation in the international community
for being closed off from outsiders — a reputation that it
cultivated for thousands of years. In recent decades, however, this
past custom has rapidly been changing and
China has become a world leader in manufacturing and
production, leveraging a large population and an immense
technological skill base. Today China is pushing for more growth,
looking to drive innovation to launch its economy into the future.
This has led to a trend of opening up to the world, and in keeping
with that trend, China has begun to reach out to Israel.
Today Israel is only the third country with which China has
developed a multi-visit visa program to encourage business and
tourist travel. This highlights the importance of Israel's role
as an innovation center for new technologies, particularly in the
fields of Agrotech, Healthcare, Fintech and cyber security, and
China's desire to strengthen its cooperation with Israeli
technology companies.
In March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chinese Vice
Premier Liu Yandong announced that Israel and China were starting
negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement. A free-trade
agreement between Israel and China may not only increase the gross
national product of both countries, but also would most likely
double the total value of traded goods between both countries,
which currently stands at $8 billion.
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