China presents the Arab side with the flags of all Arab League member states and the Arab League flag, which were brought to the China Space Station via the Shenzhou-17 spacecraft on October 26, 2023, and returned to Earth with the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft on October 31, 2023. The presentation took place at the 10th Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum in Beijing on Thursday, symbolizing the enduring China-Arab friendship. Photo: Global Times

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday put forward “five cooperation frameworks” to step up the building of a China-Arab community with a shared future, which include a more dynamic framework for innovation. 
 
China stands ready to build with the Arab side a joint space debris observation center and a BeiDou application, cooperation and development center, and step up cooperation in manned space mission and passenger aircraft, Xi highlighted during his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 10th Ministerial Conference of China-Arab Cooperation Forum in Beijing on Thursday morning.
 
China presented the Arab side with the flags of all Arab League member states and the Arab League flag, which were brought to the China Space Station via the Shenzhou-17 spacecraft on October 26, 2023, and returned to Earth with the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft on October 31, 2023. The presentation took place at the 10th Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum in Beijing on Thursday, symbolizing the enduring China-Arab friendship.

According to Xinhua, the 10th ministerial conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) adopted the Beijing Declaration, the CASCF execution plan for 2024-2026, and a China-Arab states joint statement on the Palestinian issue in Beijing on Thursday.

The execution plan charts the course for strengthening the building of a forum mechanism in the next two years and promoting bilateral and multilateral cooperation in fields such as politics, economy and trade, investment, finance, infrastructure, resources and environment, cultural exchange, aerospace, education and health, Xinhua said.

The cooperation in satellite navigation and other space fields has greatly expanded the cooperation space between China and Arab countries, enhancing the cooperation strength of both sides, observers hailed on Thursday.
 
Liu Zhongmin, a professor with the Middle East Studies Institute of Shanghai International Studies University, told the Global Times on Thursday that in the past, the cooperation between China and Arab countries was relatively single-focused, primarily centered on China importing energy from Arab countries. However, with the advent of a new technological breakthroughs, China-Arab cooperation in new fields has been continuously deepening, involving satellite navigation, space technology, 5G technology, and the entire energy industrial chain, which facilitates Middle Eastern countries’ industrial revolution.
 
Gulf countries, in particular, are transitioning away from traditional energy industries to diversified industries, engaging in cooperation in many new technology fields, Liu said.
 
The first China-Arab States Summit in 2022 proposed “eight major cooperation initiatives”, which covers a number of new industries and categories of technology .
 
For example, it is mentioned in the 2022 initiatives that China is willing to establish the China-Arab BeiDou Application Industry Promotion Center to provide high-quality services for Arab States in the fields of transportation, precision agriculture, search and rescue, among others. China will build a number of joint laboratories or research and development cooperation centers and provide 300 advanced and applicable technologies to the Arab States.
 
Cooperation in areas such as food security, green innovation and health is deepening and getting more substantial. Platforms for people-to-people exchanges and cooperation are functioning well. Early harvests have been achieved in all the “eight major cooperation initiatives,” Xi noted on Thursday.  
 
The domain of space has increasingly become a new front for China-Arab states cooperation. One of the highlights is China and Egypt signing a cooperation agreement addressing space exploration in Beijing in December 2023, to boost deep space exploration, spacecraft development and construction of space infrastructure.
 
Zhang Kejian, administrator of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Sherif Sedky, Chief Operating Officer of the Egyptian Space Agency (EGSA), signed a memorandum of understanding between the governments of the two countries on space cooperation and peaceful use of outer space and a cooperation agreement between the CNSA and the EGSA on the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).

According to the documents, both sides will encourage joint research and development cooperation in a variety of areas including lunar and deep space exploration, development and launch of spacecraft, construction of space infrastructure, satellite data reception and application, the BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation, space science and astronomical observation.
 
The China-Arab BeiDou Center was also inaugurated in April 2018, at the headquarters of the Arab Information and Communication Technology Organization in Tunisia. This represents the first overseas center established by China's BeiDou Satellite Navigation System.

Collaborations in the space domain has expanded the future cooperation scope between China and Arab states and improved the quality and level of cooperation. Such collaborations have also provided a stronger foundation for the new wave of industrialization across Arab countries, observers said.
 
Liu emphasized that China’s proposal of the three global initiatives, namely the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative, has received a positive and widespread response across the Arab world. It can be said that China-Arab cooperation is an important field for China to promote these three initiatives.
 
Therefore, China-Arab cooperation is not just a simple technical cooperation relationship, but rather a more comprehensive and extensive cooperation, involving head-of-state diplomacy, various platform mechanism constructions, and covering political, economic, cultural, and other fields. Especially on the basis of traditional fields such as energy cooperation, the scope of cooperation has further expanded, he explained.