Nader Habibi

Analysts have been closely watching China’s growing economic relations with oil-producing states in the Middle East over recent years. Yet despite the paucity of energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean countries, China has also been quietly extending its Belt and Road Initiative into this strategic corner of the region. In this Middle East Brief, Nader Habibi analyzes the changing pattern of Chinese trade and investment in Turkey, Israel, and Egypt. What does the Egypt-Turkey competition for Chinese investment tell us about regional geopolitics? Will Israel’s courting of Chinese tech investors ring alarm bells in Washington, D.C.? Could the Belt and Road Initiative provide the opportunity for regional economic integration in the Middle East that the Arab-Israeli peace process failed to deliver? Habibi argues that Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in the Eastern Mediterranean are laying the foundations for new economic connections between the Levant and other regions—and that the Levant could in the future become an unexpected front in the geopolitical rivalry between China and the U.S.