President Peres’s state visit to China, the first by an Israeli president in over a decade, occurs against the background of the current debate in Israel over Chinese investments in Israeli assets. Reports in recent months of talks between the Israeli food conglomerate Tnuva and China’s Bright Food over the sale of the controlling share in Tnuva, and reports of a possible sale of Clal Insurance to a group of Chinese investors, have touched off a heated public debate about China’s penetration into the Israeli market. In fact, already in 2010, Chinese companies showed serious interest in investing in Israel, especially in the hi-tech sector, and 2011 saw the largest investment of a Chinese company in Israel to date: the $1.44 billion purchase of 60 percent of Makhteshim Agan, a world leader in agricultural chemicals, by ChemChina, a Chinese chemical conglomerate. There have also been direct investments of more than half a billion dollars in Israel industries, mostly in the fields of IT, advanced medical equipment, and agricultural technology. Furthermore, agreements of cooperation involving hundreds of millions of dollars have been concluded between leading academic institutions in Israel and Chinese universities.
