Commercial ports are usually a cacophonous jumble of clanging metal, screeching chains and yelling dock workers engaged in a race to unload massive container ships. But the barely two-year-old Haifa Bayport run by the Shanghai International Port Group on Israel’s Mediterranean coast is quiet enough to hear the seagulls caw. The port, where a fleet of electric vehicles ferries cargo 24 hours a day, has barely any humans in sight, Melanie Lidman reports for The Circuit. Massive red and white cranes that carry the company’s name in Chinese characters loom 100 meters (328 feet) over the nearly silent pier, hoisting the containers above the freighters with state-of-the-art technology and logistical expertise.

Looking east: China’s SIPG, a state-owned industrial conglomerate that operates the world’s biggest port in Shanghai, is playing the long game. Having won a bidding war in 2015 to construct the new facility and compete against the existing Port of Haifa that was built 90 years ago, the company is looking eastward. With Israel linked now to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain through the 2020 Abraham Accords, SIPG officials say Haifa can be a maritime gateway to the broader Middle East. The vision fits into China’s global “Belt and Road” initiative, which aims to build transportation infrastructure around the world and create an uninterrupted, modern-day Silk Road.

International expertise: “In the future, the port will be a very easy way to help connect all of the countries around Israel,” SIPG Bayport Israel CEO Miao Qiang told The Circuit during a tour of the facility. “We can really contribute to connecting the entire Middle East.” Some 99% of all cargo arriving in Israel enters through Haifa and the two other port cities of Ashdod and Eilat, which last year handled 3.1 million containers in total. As outdated technology and sluggish government bureaucracy proved unable to handle increased traffic over the past decade, Israel decided to build two more ports at Ashdod and Haifa and put the operations at all four sites up for bidding by experienced international port companies.

Indian rival: The older Haifa port is now run by India’s Adani Group in a joint venture with Israel’s Gadot Chemical Terminals. While competition from SIPG has steadily eaten into the older Haifa port’s market share, the new owners, led by India’s second-wealthiest man, Gautam Adani, are overhauling the facility to fight back. The Adani Group’s winning bid of $1.1 billion last year was strongly supported by the U.S., which expressed security concerns about China’s operation of the Bayport. The older port has also become a centerpiece of the so-called I2U2 initiative, which created a regional West Asia trading bloc two years ago comprising India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S.

Gulf connection: Building on I2U2, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was expected during a meeting on Sunday with Saudi, Emirati and Indian counterparts to discuss the possibility of connecting Gulf and Arab countries via a network of railways that would also be connected to India, Axios reported. While Israel’s role is not directly part of the discussion, it could be added later, the report said.

Sixth Fleet: American concerns center on the Chinese company’s operating essential infrastructure so close to the old Haifa Port, which houses Israeli military installations and is also an important refueling stop for the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet. SIPG says the issues are unfounded because Israeli authorities handle all security matters. “We are not dealing with any defense or security issues whatsoever,” the company’s vice president in Israel, Yoav Zuckerman, said. “We are just loading and unloading containers and general cargo.”

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Amid warnings of more U.S. bank closures and a world economic slowdown, Saudi Arabia is looking for new opportunities to pour the kingdom’s petroleum wealth into international investment, The Circuit’s Jonathan Ferziger reports. Two Saudi cabinet ministers, accompanied by representatives of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, traveled to Beverly Hills, Calif., for last week’s annual Milken Institute Global Conference, where the world’s top bankers and investors were discussing the global financial picture.

Leaping away: The Saudi minister for economy and planning, Faisal Alibrahim, spoke about his government’s efforts to “leapfrog away from oil” and diversify the economy through investing abroad in technology companies and developing commercial industries at home. Fueled by its $650 billion Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia is distributing venture capital and promoting the desert kingdom as one of the world’s fastest-growing tourist destinations. “We have a very large VC ecosystem that is growing fast, one of the largest, if not the largest in the Middle East,” Alibrahim said.

Greater scrutiny: Alibrahim and his fellow cabinet member, Investment Minister Khalid Al-Falih, joined panel discussions at the Beverly Hilton after a parade of bankers and world financial figures painted a gloomy picture of the coming months. Among other MENA financial figures at the conference, Ibrahim Ajami, head of ventures at Mubadala Capital, an investment arm of Abu Dhabi’s $284 billion sovereign wealth fund, invited pitches from promising tech companies while cautioning that the current industry shakeout means they will be subject to intensified examination.

Shifting narrative: “The overall, overarching perception today amongst a lot of our VC colleagues is that everybody should go to the Middle East and raise capital, because that’s where the money is,” Ajami said, adding, “there’s a very high bar for it. Investors are much more sophisticated.” While applying greater scrutiny, Ajami noted that Mubadala is invested in more than 100 venture capital firms. “I just want to shift the narrative from one that says that capital has dried up and venture capital is no longer an interesting asset class, to one that says, you know, I think the industry is evolving,” he said.

Training engineers: On a panel exploring how to follow up on the 2020 Abraham Accords, Israeli investor Shlomo Dovrat said a shortage of trained software developers could be addressed within the MENA region through Israel-Gulf partnerships in technology education. He noted that Israeli companies employ about 40,000 software engineers in Ukraine. “Why not Jordan and Egypt?” asked Dovrat, founder of Viola Ventures. “The salary level is, you know, over $100,000 and Israel will hire as many people as you can provide with your computer science graduates, and we are willing to invest in tools because it’s a strategic challenge for us.”

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