ABSTRACT
The One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative was announced in 2013 during China's President Xi Jinping's visit to Kazakhstan. Since its official announcement in 2013, China's OBOR initiative became a singularly important catchword in Chinese diplomacy and an important aspect of Chinese economic policy. Chinese investment started from purchasing Israeli technology and patents, then moved to investment in Israel high-tech companies focusing on research and development (R&D), and then to overall acquisition of major Israel companies, most notably Tnuva. China's OBOR vision may lead to the most ambitious investment in infrastructure in human history. China has participated in various Israeli infrastructure construction projects. Economic relations aside, recent years have witnessed a significant upsurge in cultural, educational, and most notably academic exchanges between China and Israel. Jewish and Israeli studies began quite late in China. In the 1980s there were some signs that the relations between China and Israel were warming up, but no academic programme was launched.
