Some 100 entrepreneurs from Israeli high-tech startup companies arrived at the southeastern Chinese city of Foshan last Thursday to attend a special innovation convention and present their technologies to local investors.
Israeli entrepreneurs held a record number of one-on-one meetings this year with Chinese investors - more than 800. Some 70 translators enabled effective communication during the meetings.
The conference was organized by the investment firms Cukierman & Co. and Catalyst Fund, the municipality of Foshan and Shenzhen Leaguer Venture Capital Co., a subsidiary of the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen that runs an international science and technology innovation center in the city.
The event was attended by some 1,200 guests and over 500 Chinese entrepreneurs. Israel's Ambassador to China, Zvi Heifetz, and its consul general to Guangzhau, Nadav Cohen, also attended the conference.
Israeli entrepreneurs presented local investors with groundbreaking Israeli innovations in fields such as artificial intelligence, informational technology, life sciences, cyber, energy, telecommunications and transportation technologies.
Haggai Ravid, the CEO of Cukierman & Co., said that "this is the 19th time that the GoforIsrael conference has been held, and it seems that this time was the most successful."
According to organizers, this is the second time that the conference, which used to be called GoforEurope, has been held in China.
"The Israeli companies generated a lot of interest," Ravid said. "The city of Foshan, which is considered a growing and central financial hub in China, was completely covered in flags for the event with unprecedented excitement and attention."
Ravid added that "among the participants were many Chinese investors who arrived on long domestic flights in China, even from distances of 2,000 kilometers [some 1,200 miles] especially to meet with the Israeli companies."
Meanwhile, the Chinese government's Silk Road Project is advancing in Israel with the aim of spreading Chinese culture throughout the Western world.
The Chinese government chose a government-run hospital, Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Hangzhou Province, to partner with Israel's Reidman International College for Complementary and Integrative Medicine and Maccabi Tivi health care provider.
Representatives of the government hospital examined the Chinese medicine training programs at Reidman and the quality of the treatments provided by both Maccabi and Reidman in depth and deemed them worthy of partnership to integrate Chinese medicine within Israel's medical system.
There are currently some 2,500 specialists in Israel treating patients with traditional Chinese medicine. Every year some 150 additional students complete their studies in the field and join the industry.
In the past decade, this field of study in Israel has grown more comprehensive, requiring four years of study and a training period in the integrative treatment.
