While U.S. President Joe Biden is stepping up his efforts to confront China’s dominance in the Asia-Pacific, he might also want to pay attention to what’s happening in the Middle East.

Chinese influence in the Mideast and Persian Gulf regions has been steadily rising over the two years, particularly in the tech sector where firms like Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision among others are rapidly expanding. In fact, China is so far ahead, according to Mohammed Soliman, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., that unless the U.S. radically changes its policy, it may be too late to catch up.