China-Egypt relations: A model of friendship and unity among developing nations

Editor's note: Imran Khalid, a special commentator for CGTN, is a freelance columnist on international affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

"Once you drink from the Nile, you are destined to return." That line comes from a Xi Jinping essay carried by Egyptian newspapers as he landed in Cairo this week, his first visit to the country in a decade. The essay, titled "Celebrating 70 Years of Solidarity, China and Egypt Embark on a New Journey," reads on the surface like an anniversary greeting. Underneath it is something closer to a working blueprint, the relationship China points to when it explains, to the rest of the Global South, what a development partnership without Western strings actually looks like in practice.

The anniversary is not incidental. Egypt was the first Arab and African country to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China on May 30, 1956, when Gamal Abdel Nasser's government broke with Western pressure to do it. Seventy years on, Xi describes the relationship as one of "close brothers standing by each other," "reliable partners in win-win cooperation," "role models of friendship and mutual learning," and "sincere friends committed to equality and mutual trust." Those four phrases set up the five directions he lays out for where the relationship goes next: deeper mutual trust, expanded win-win cooperation, sustained civilizational exchange, joint defense of fairness and justice, and Egypt's role as a hinge for wider China-Arab and China-Africa cooperation. Each has a concrete referent already on the ground.

Start with trade, the clearest test of "win-win." Bilateral commerce reached roughly $20.8 billion in 2025, and China has been Egypt's largest trading partner for more than a decade. The composition still reflects two economies at different industrial stages, Chinese manufactured exports running far ahead of Egyptian shipments the other way, which is exactly why Beijing's decision to grant Egyptian oranges zero-tariff access, the first African product to get it, matters as a signal of where the balance needs to move next. The fraternal language will have to keep translating into market access, not just infrastructure, for the "benchmark for joint development" claim to hold.

On infrastructure, the record is harder to dispute. Chinese firms built the Iconic Tower at a height of 385.8 meters – Africa's tallest building now – inside Egypt's New Administrative Capital, along with the light rail serving 10th of Ramadan City. The Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone had drawn more than 200 companies and generated over 10,000 direct jobs by June this year. Egypt's own satellite program reached a milestone in 2023, when EgyptSat 2 made it the first African country with full in-house capability to assemble and test its own satellites, a program built with Chinese cooperation that Cairo now runs itself. 

The cultural pillar gets less attention but does real work. A Shanghai Museum exhibition of 788 Egyptian artifacts drew 2.77 million visitors between mid-2024 and mid-2025, evidence that the "role models of friendship and mutual learning" line is not just rhetorical filler laid over a Silk Road that once carried Chinese silk and paper westward and Egyptian aromatics and knowledge east.

The fourth direction, on fairness and justice, is where the essay moves past economic cooperation into geopolitics. Xi writes that the two countries "firmly support the just cause of the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights," pointing to the issue as a cause the two owe each other "as Global South countries" in the process of seeking "strength through unity." Cairo has absorbed two years of the diplomatic and humanitarian weight of the war next door, largely without the arms transfers that have complicated Washington's standing across the region. Putting that language inside an anniversary essay tells the rest of the Arab and African world plainly that Beijing continues to invest in peace in the region and stands ready to facilitate dialogue and communication.

The essay's most consequential line for planners connects China's 15th Five-Year Plan to Egypt's Vision 2030. China's new plan prioritizes renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, and digital infrastructure, precisely the sectors where Egypt's own strategy is short on financing that doesn't come with conditionality attached. That is the mechanical basis for the fifth direction: using Egypt as the fulcrum for the parallel China-Arab and China-Africa cooperation mechanisms Beijing has spent a decade building, with the Suez zone already functioning as a model other African governments now study directly.

What Xi's essay proposes, and what decades of specific projects already support, is that Egypt remains the place where Beijing tests whether "win-win" outlasts a single anniversary. And 70 years of China-Egypt relations is already a testament to the fact that mutual respect and coordinated development can advance the progress of developing countries.The alignment between the 15th Five-Year Plan and Vision 2030 is the next chapter enhancing bilateral synergy, not a victory lap on the last one.

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