Chinese EV sales leading Israel, China supplying Houthis with weapons for passage?, new Chinese auto factory in Egypt, Huawei in Morocco, Turkish tariffs on Chinese EVs, new Chinese ambassador in Oman
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I wasn’t planning to publish anything over the weekend but I just looked at my browser and saw a lot of stories have been accumulating over the past week while I enjoyed the end of a really nice winter break. I’m back on campus tomorrow, getting ready for a new semester, so it’s a good chance to clear the tabs.
Chinese electric model tops Israel's car sales in 2024 - Xinhua. In a recent conversation with an astute Israeli analyst of regional politics, the subject of public sentiment towards China since October 7, 2023 came up. I asked him if Israelis were upset, angry, or disappointed with China’s response. His response: nobody is paying attention to China’s response. Nobody thinks about it much at all, really. This brought me back my conversation with Gedaliah Afterman for my podcast (coming back soon!), when he said he expected Israel to continue trading with China at a high level despite its response to the Hamas attack. He thought that economic engagement can and will be siloed off from political disagreements. I hear this from people around the Middle East all the time when talking about China, no matter which country they’re from.
So some might be surprised to see this story from Xinhua that Chinese EVs are leading sales in Israel. I’m not. I’ll be looking for more data to see how accurate this is, but anecdotally, the number of Chinese cars I see on the road in the UAE is astounding. I never noticed them a few years ago and now they’re everywhere. And that trend is apparently holding all over the region.