China has invested $10 billion in Egypt as annual trade reaches $20 billion
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo on Wednesday in talks that highlighted Beijing’s expanding economic and diplomatic engagement across the Middle East.
Xi arrived Tuesday evening at Cairo airport, which was adorned with Chinese and Egyptian flags, and was greeted on the tarmac by el-Sissi and military guards in a red-carpet ceremony, according to the Associated Press. The leaders marked 70 years of diplomatic ties with friendly opinion pieces published Tuesday in Egypt’s state-run newspapers.
In wide-ranging talks Wednesday, Xi said Cairo and Beijing should jointly oppose what he called “unilateralism and acts of bullying,” according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. The Chinese leader also called for the two countries to “work together for a more just and equitable global governance system,” Xinhua reported.
Xi wrote in his opinion piece that Beijing and Cairo should “expand the scope of pragmatic collaboration” through development. El-Sissi’s counterpart piece lauded China’s investments in Egypt and reiterated Cairo’s support of China’s claim that Taiwan is part of its territory.
The visit reflects a relationship that has built over years. In 2023, Egypt was invited to join the BRICS bloc of nations, a grouping of major emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and is seen as a counterweight to Western-led institutions such as the G7. A year later, Egypt signed agreements with China to collaborate on its Belt and Road Initiative, a signature policy of Xi that seeks to build power and transportation infrastructure around the world.
China has invested more than $10 billion in Egypt, building a business hub east of Cairo and an electric rail line for industry in the Nile Delta, according to AP. Annual trade between the two countries is estimated at $20 billion, according to government figures cited by AP. Trade between the U.S. and Egypt totaled $15.7 billion in 2025.
“China continues to build up its soft power reserves while the United States self-sabotages its own stock,” Amr Hamzawy, director of the Washington-based Carnegie Middle East Program, wrote in a paper earlier this year with Kathryn Selfe, a former fellow at the program.
The relationship has a military dimension. In August, China and Egypt held a multiday air exercise at several bases across Egypt — the first-ever combat exercise for China’s J-16 fighter jets and Egypt’s French-made Rafale fighters.
Xi views Egypt “as a base to reach the wider Arab and African world, at a time when the U.S. has less attention to spare there,” said Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, a Middle East expert with Jakarta’s Center of Economic and Law Studies.
Xi arrived in Cairo after attending a two-day conference of the 10-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a political and security group, in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek. The leaders of Russia, India, Pakistan and Iran attended the conference.
The visit also follows the Trump administration’s sanctions push aimed at isolating Iran from its remaining economic partners, including China, which buys more than 80% of Iranian oil shipments, usually through indirect channels. Beijing says its trade with Iran has always abided by international law.
With oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz heavily disrupted by the U.S.-Iran war that began Feb. 28, the Suez Canal — which Egypt controls — has become an important alternative path for energy supplies out of the region.
“China has good reason to strengthen ties with the country that controls the route still open,” Rakhmat said.
Xi has positioned China as a regional mediator in other ways. In 2023, Beijing brokered a deal to reestablish diplomatic ties between Iran — its most important regional ally and oil supplier — and Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally. Since then, ties between Riyadh and Tehran have frayed; Iran attacked Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries as part of its retaliation against the U.S. and Israel during the war.
China has long advocated a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a position supported across the Arab world. Shortly before Hamas militants attacked Israel in 2023 and launched the war in Gaza, Xi hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and announced a “strategic partnership” with the Palestinian Authority.
Xi, who visited the Grand Egyptian Museum near the pyramids of Giza during the trip, is making his first visit to Egypt in a decade and his first time in the region since visiting Saudi Arabia in 2022. El-Sissi has visited China multiple times in recent years.