The Secretary-General of the Union of Arab Chambers, Dr. Khaled Hanafy, stressed, during a speech at the annual meeting of the Chinese Council of the Chinese-Arab Joint Chamber of Commerce, which was held virtually on August 19, 2021, that, "the Corona pandemic has redrawn Arab-Chinese relations within the framework of the Belt and Road, which requires building a strategic alliance in which the Arab region through Egypt is a corridor for China to the African continent." Pointing to "the importance of expanding cooperation in the future beyond traditional exchanges towards new areas that are in high demand in the Arab world, such as the digital economy, renewable and nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, green manufacturing and agriculture, fintech, electric cars and other sectors of the green economy, as well as sustainable infrastructure and logistics, while strengthening scientific, technological, academic and educational health cooperation, as well as all sectors in which China plays a leading role.
Hanafy stressed the importance of absorbing Arab and Chinese youth energies through supporting entrepreneurship projects and supporting innovative projects that serve sustainable development goals and contribute to strengthening Arab-Chinese relations.
He called for "a new role for the Chamber and the Arab-Chinese Business Council to motivate Arab and Chinese companies to bring about a fundamental shift in production and consumption patterns from a linear model that depletes the environment to a circular model that renews it, based on the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We also call for reconsidering the objectives and moving from degenerative to regenerative and distributive models to enable the private sector to contribute more to achieving a real transformation to serve economic and social needs and provide sufficient job opportunities and higher standards of living for the Arab and Chinese sides.”
Hanafy pointed to the strengthening of Arab-Chinese cooperation through a number of major investment projects, such as the Suez Zone for economic and trade cooperation in Egypt, and the second phase of the container terminal of Khalifa Port in the UAE, considering that these prominent projects have contributed to the advancement of bilateral economic and trade cooperation in the new era.
