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Following is an excerpt from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks made on Tuesday 23 Adar in Beijing, to the Third Meeting of the China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation:

“The innovation conference is crucial because I believe that innovation is crucial for the future of our countries, indeed for the future of the world.

There was a book that caught my attention when we were looking at the exhibit outside. It was an old book. It goes back many centuries, by one of our great thinkers and teachers, Rambam, Maimonides, and it’s translated into Chinese. Why is it important? Because the first internet, the ‘Jewish internet’, goes back over 1,000 years. We had communities of Jews scattered in various places, some in Europe, some in Yemen, some in Asia, and they would ask questions of the rabbis, of the very big scholars – questions and from generation to generation these questions grew, and sometimes it would take months – months – for a letter, a query, a ‘text message’, to arrive and then several more months until an answer came.

And this was constantly improved. There was, as they say, a cloud of learning and scholarship. We’re always seeking to find new approaches. This Jewish tradition is very much at the heart of what we are doing in the common quest for innovation, in the Israeli contributions to the development of the new economy, the internet economy, and it’s only natural that our two ancient peoples, who have always prized scholarship, learning, will now connect in the modern era to lead the great changes that are taking place.

I believe that the future belongs to those countries that innovate. I believe that there’s no area in our lives that will not be technologized. Everything – everything – is being technologized. Everything – water, air, food, transport, communications, energy. Everything is being technologized by this innovation.

And those countries and those companies that have the edge of innovation are the ones who are going to succeed. Further, I believe that the speed of innovation is increasing constantly, and therefore the need to have systemic policies to encourage innovation is becoming a necessity, a prerequisite for success.

We admit that we have certain capacities in this area, but we think that if we partner with you, we’ll show unbelievable capacities for change and growth and management and industry and global market reach, and I think the combination is very, very powerful.

New industries are created as we speak. As we speak. Since your visit to Israel, which was only recently, we’ve learned that Israel has a car industry. Now, we’ve never really had a car industry. We only produce chassis, engines, tires. We tried once but failed, miserably. But we have a car industry. Our car industry is the autonomous vehicle technology, the ‘brains’ of the car. And we’ve just had Intel, that invests heavily in China but also invests heavily in Israel, invest in one company – one company – $15 billion to buy it, but also when it bought this company of automotive technology, it said: Here, you have the keys for the world, for all our automotive technologies in the world. So Israel is now becoming a center for autonomous driving in the entire world because of innovation. Because of innovation. Now, the same thing is happening with digital health. The same thing is happening in other areas too. I should add that in addition to this particular company that Intel bought for 15 billion dollars, we have 500 companies that do the same thing. A few years ago we had nothing. These are like mushrooms after the rain.

We want to marry our technology with China’s capacities. The ability to have technological exchanges depends on the sustainability of this conference, and we strongly hope that we can continue the work that you began, Adam, in the coming years. Secondly, it depends, I believe, on the work of the NDRC and the Prime Minister’s Office in specific areas of technological cooperation. And third, it depends on the acceleration of the Free Trade Agreement between China and Israel, which by itself is a platform for technology exchanges.

Technology is so valuable today that we all can benefit from it. Israel has benefited a great deal but we understand that we could benefit more to the extent that we could have China realize its extraordinary goals and ambitions to build on its extraordinary success. We want to be your partners.

We think we can be your partners. This forum has shown that we’re well on the right road, and let’s continue on it.

I want to thank you again, thank Premier Li and of course President Xi who is sitting here today. Thank you.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)