Strengthening bridges: Dubai Chambers' CEO highlights ties with China

In a strategic move to bolster China-UAE economic relations, Dubai Chambers, one of the world's largest membership-based chambers of commerce, has announced that the Dubai Business Forum – China will convene in Beijing on August 21.

In an exclusive interview with CGTN, Mohammad Ali Rashed Lootah, president and CEO of Dubai Chambers, introduced the main objective of holding such a flagship event in China and expressed his expectations for China-UAE cooperation in emerging sectors.

Flagship event for exchanges

Noting China as its first trading partner, Mohammad said the purpose of the forum, organized in full by Dubai Chambers, is to forge stronger connections between Chinese and Dubai-based businesses, promote bilateral investment opportunities, and enhance trade relations.

"It can be fintech, agri-tech, food security, which is the importance of this growing globally, sustainability, and the changes that we see, especially after the UAE hosted COP28," he said. 

"I think in the last few years, companies started witnessing the positive impact of sustainability on their profitability and their own sustainable growth," the head of Dubai Chambers told reporter, "so there are very important topics that will be discussed under thought leadership, similar to any international forum."

He expected the event participants to have fruitful discussions that will directly impact trade and investment, and indirectly when it comes to continuous understanding of different social and business cultures on both sides.

Chinese market matters

Dubai Chambers is a non-profit public entity that supports Dubai's vision as a global player, featuring 31 offices across the world, with China being the only country that hosts more than one office.

"The purpose of these offices is not limited to promotion only. It is to help attracting more foreign direct investment in Dubai and support any Dubai-based company to expand globally," said Mohammad, "We manage to help Emirati companies, international companies, especially Chinese companies from Dubai to expand to the wider region around us, either Africa, GCC or Central Asia and South Asia."

As this year marks the 40th anniversary of China-UAE diplomatic relations, the Chambers highly value China's market.

"Having a flagship event in China and the anniversary of the 40th year, this shows the importance of the Chinese market for us in Dubai. So this was not a coincidence. This was a planned approach to ensure that we appreciate the long-standing growing relationship between China and to try to strengthen the bridge when it comes to business and investment between Dubai and our partners in China."

Cooperation ahead

Highlighting the growth of emerging industries, including artificial intelligence (AI) and fintech, Mohammad believes that Dubai has a strength in providing a favorable business environment and is ready to serve as a regional hub to connect its business partners with the world.

Another event of the Chambers, Expand More Star, for example, attracted around 1,000 tech startups and around 1,000 investors globally last year. The platform aims to help startups scale up and connect them with the right partners to expand globally.

"Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy overlooks the environment and the ecosystem of the digital economy, works with policymakers and the government to ensure that we have the right policies in place when it comes to attracting retention talent, the digital talent, helping the talent to start their tech startups, taking these tech startups into different phases of scaling up their business, hoping to have more unicorns in the future," he explained.

"We noticed an increased inflow of tech Chinese companies coming into the city, and what's more interesting is that a good number of them are small and medium businesses." Mohammad told CGTN, stressing that technology will play an increasingly important role in the economic growth and cooperation of both sides.

"We encourage more Chinese businesses to come (and) invest in the city, and we will help them to find the relevant partner when it comes to the area of investment," said the head.