the Iran war<\/a> repeatedly disrupted their flights and travel plans, but they eventually arrived in Shanghai.<\/p>\n\u201cTheir willingness to make the trip was unwavering,\u201d said Lilian Liu at Middle East-focused tour operator UFOX Travel, who hosted the family. Such clients barely existed a few years ago, Liu said.<\/p>\n
Her business once followed a familiar formula: taking Chinese entrepreneurs to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to explore property projects, free trade zones and energy developments, while organising study tours for Chinese students travelling to the Middle East.<\/p>\n
The shift became apparent last winter, she noted, when she hosted a group of more than 40 students from a private high school in Abu Dhabi, many of whom came from middle- and upper-income families.<\/p>\n
By the end of the trip, the group was most excited not by Shanghai\u2019s tourist attractions but by robotics showrooms<\/a>, real-world AI applications and the digital infrastructure visible throughout China\u2019s cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In April, a family from the United Arab Emirates \u2013 four adults, three children and a nanny \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8630,3711,84,891,429,1294,79455,20827,585,632,215477,4528,5386,5752,8711,617,215476,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-638185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-africa","tag-business","tag-china","tag-dubai","tag-economy","tag-gulf","tag-hangzhou","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-ningbo-new-way","tag-oman","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-shanghai","tag-shenzhen","tag-tiktok","tag-ufox-travel","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}