FOCI — Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence — has become a central lens through which Washington evaluates corporate governance, investment structures, and operational security.

As global supply chains move out of China to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and parts of Europe, something else is shifting quietly but decisively: Chinese business owners, executives, and high-earning professionals are relocating their capital, their companies, and in many cases their families. This emerging wave is not the traditional emigrant population of a decade ago. It is a more financially sophisticated, globally connected, and risk-aware class shaped

Artificial intelligence is no longer a sector. It is an infrastructure layer reshaping national competitiveness, capital flows, and geopolitical alignment. As governments race to define control over data, algorithms, supply chains, and national security boundaries, companies and investors operating across borders are confronting a rapidly tightening regulatory battlefield. The combination of AI adoption, national interest reviews, digital-asset oversight, and economic securit

For China, and particularly for Chinese companies engaged in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects across the Middle East, this shift brings a new wave of challenges. As the U.S. re-enters the region through strategic realignment with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and now a post-conflict Syria, China faces rising geopolitical and regulatory risks in territories once seen as promising nodes of BRI expansion.