Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in Beijing with a large delegation of business people to promote further economic cooperation between Israel and China.  

Following shortly after the visit of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, it seems the Middle East is looking even further eastward to expand its network of support and enhance stability. 

China’s role in the war-torn region, though very different from that of the United States or Russia, is expanding and taking on greater importance. 

On CGTN’s ‘Dialogue with Yang Rui’, US commentator and visiting scholar at Tsinghua University Rick Dunham sees China as playing a helpful role in the Middle East.

 “Going up to modern times, the relationship between China and Israel works because China has avenues of communication with every power in the Middle East. If Israel wants to communicate indirectly – whether it is Iran or Saudi Arabia, whether it’s Syria, whether it’s Russia – China has access to everybody, and I think that’s what makes it significant,” Dunham said.

On economic cooperation, He Wenping, Research Fellow from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, thinks innovation is a key area. "Israel, even though it’s a small country by size, it has a very high technical know-how, and also lots of inventions have been made by Israel’s engineers and scientists. So we have a lot of room for further high-tech cooperation.” 

In fact, on March 21, Netanyahu attended the third meeting of the China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation, a forum designed to promote technological innovation and cooperation between the two countries.