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Source: https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/whats-behind-israels-growing-ties-china
Israel's Growing Ties with China
(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams - China has ten cities larger than Israel's entire population. China has no indigenous Jewish community, and Israel has no indigenous Chinese community. Israel is closely aligned with China's main competitor in the world, the U.S. However, the China-Israel relationship has been expanding rapidly in trade, investment, education exchanges, and tourism. China is attracted to Israel's vaunted technology sector, and Israel welcomes China's investments and potential as a research collaborator. At the University of Haifa, Chinese student enrollment has gone from 20 to 200 in the past five years. In 2013, Israel's Technion Institute of Technology was awarded a $130 million grant from the Li Ka Shing Foundation to establish a branch in Guangdong Province. In 2014, Tel Aviv University announced that it would partner with Tsinghua University in Beijing to build the CIN Research Center to focus on biotech, solar, water, and environmental technology. In 2016, the University of Haifa announced plans to build a joint laboratory at East China Normal University in Shanghai to research ecology, data, biomedicine, and neurobiology. The writer, a senior fellow at CFR, handled Middle East affairs at the U.S. National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.