Israel - China Relations
It is in Israel's interest to have a good relationship with China. While it is important for Israel to have strategic dialogues with China, "there are clear limitations" for Israel in terms of its military and security cooperation with China. By 2007 relations with China had completely recovered from several cold years following the "Phalcon crisis" when Israel canceled a military contract with China at the insistence of the United States. She said that military cooperation with China is now very minor and tightly controlled, with full transparency with the US.
The long-standing friendship between Israel and China started with the first Jewish community in Kaifeng City of Henan Province more than 1,000 years ago. The friendship was further strengthened during World War II, when around 20,000 Jewish refugees found sanctuary in Shanghai. Diplomatic ties were established in 1992. China became the third top trade partner with Israel, and its most important export destination. Israeli high-tech factories had difficulties importing components from China since the start of the Israeli was in the Gaza Strip on October 7, Israeli news website Ynet reported on 24 December 2023. The website said Israeli electronics and high-tech factories in occupied Palestine have had trouble importing Chinese-made dual-purpose equipment, due to forms and paperwork.
Dual-purpose equipment includes any product that can be used for both civilian or military use, a term Israeli authorities are extremely familiar with. In fact, Israeli authorities have included thousands of products in their sanctioned dual-purpose products, which are not allowed to enter the Gaza Strip, such as concrete. Ironically, Israeli importers are complaining about the fact that they have to fill out mandatory forms when purchasing Chinese products. Inaccurately filled paperwork has caused delays in shipments, according to Ynet. This led Israeli importers to raise official complaints to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Economy Ministry.
Interestingly, no new forms or paperwork have been introduced by Chinese authorities or companies, however, concerned bodies are simply enforcing regulations that were previously ignored. "In recent weeks, companies in the hi-tech sector have complained about delays in shipments from China of dual-use components. In all the checks we conducted with official bodies, it appears that there is no change in regulations, but rather enforcement that was not practiced in the past. Such technical requests create bureaucratic hurdles," a government official told Ynet.
Israelis were concerned with the enforcement of regulations, saying that it reflects the supposed pro-Palestinian stance that Chinese authorities have taken. "It is clear to us that there is a direct link to the war," the unnamed official told Ynet. Some Israeli businesspeople have gone to the extent of claiming that Beijing has imposed sanctions on "Israel" for enforcing regulations. "The Chinese are imposing a kind of sanction on us. They don't officially declare it, but they are delaying shipments to Israel," an industrialist said. "This has never happened to us before. We are talking about many different types of components. In electronic products, there are tens of thousands of components, but if even one component doesn't arrive, we cannot deliver the product," he complained.
The 2023 Israel-Palestine conflict has sparked a wave of online comments and reactions in China, some of which have been labeled as antisemitic by Western media outlets such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. However, Chinses observers suggested these accusations are based on a misunderstanding of the Chinese context and perspective, and a failure to recognize the legitimate concerns and grievances of the Chinese people regarding the violence and injustice in the Middle East.
The majority of the Chinese online comments, accused by NYT and WSJ as antisemitic, were not directed at Jews as a whole, but at Israel's policies and actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. These comments are triggered by countless heart-broken pictures and footage by global media showing the miserable situation in Gaza and the tragedies that the Palestinians are experiencing every day.
The Israeli expert on Chinese affairs, Yuval Weinrib, expressed his shock at the great expansion of what he described as a wave of anti-Semitism on social media in China after the October 7 attack , and spoke of a number of examples of popular condemnations directed at Israel. He said in an interview 15 June 2024 conducted with a writer in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Ayelet Shani, that “the responses on Chinese social media to the Hamas massacre are in fact a wave of anti-Semitism. It is not anti-Israel, but anti-Semitism,” and he demonstrated this by saying that the Israeli embassy in Beijing By uploading content about the war, but the surprise was that the responses included support for Hitler.
He explained the profound shift in how the Chinese viewed Israelis. Before October 7, “China was one of the safest places to say you're Israeli, Jewish,” and the response to every Israeli who spoke Chinese and explained that they were from Israel was always, "Wow, you're Jewish," "You're the smartest in the world." This is something the Chinese learn from childhood. They think we have some kind of superpower, and there are books that teach people how smart Jews are. The writer calls this type of treatment “positive anti-Semitism.”
He added, “Now, I do not know whether the government encouraged this matter on its own initiative, or turned a blind eye, which in China means authorization, but what happened after October 7, according to the writer, is that “positive” anti-Semitism became Negative hostility, on the most shocking levels imaginable, he says. In this regard, the writer makes some comments such as: “If there are 8 million Jews in Israel, we can open a large soap factory there!” There are other comments such as: “The Jews control the world through the United States,” “They are persecuted.” The people of Gaza because of the United States.”
In further evidence of the transformation, the Israeli expert cited an example of some Chinese publishing a picture of some neighborhoods on social media showing a highly developed place, with skyscrapers, opposite a bombed neighborhood in Gaza, on which was written the phrase “Muslims in China versus Muslims in Israel or Gaza.” The Israeli expert stopped at the Chinese’s dealings with two incidents, the first related to the Israeli prisoner Noa Argamani, whom the occupation forces succeeded in recovering on June 8 from the Nuseirat camp, and whom he said was half Chinese, stressing that “the online discourse in China was to disavow her background and deny it.”
He added, "It drove me crazy, because at first I thought that this would be a strong card for Israel, but I discovered very quickly that it was not just a card of any kind. Rather, they turned it against us, and they described our attempts as efforts on our part to engage in manipulative and provocative behavior, and they claimed She is not Chinese at all. It is true that her mother is Chinese, but she herself does not have Chinese citizenship. She is an Israeli citizen.”
The second incident was that an Israeli embassy employee was stabbed in Beijing a few days after October 7. “The event was barely reported,” he said. “I was completely shocked by the anti-Semitism on social media, even though I was well aware.” They have not changed since the 1950s. China was one of the first countries to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization, and it has always supported Palestine at every opportunity and in every international institution.”
When asked about his experience with the Chinese government’s control over media outlets such as the “Douyin” application, the Chinese version of “Tik Tok,” and the “Weibo” application, the Chinese similarity to the “X” platform, Weinrib said: The government has means of censorship. It is strict about content, so content in solidarity with the Palestinians cannot be published without its permission.
He gave an example of the harassment he faced due to his attempts to publish videos of Israeli detainees in Gaza, saying, “I received a message saying that this conflicts with “community values,” because it prevents showing blood on the platform. By the way, there is already such a law, but I did not notice it. There is a problem with showing the blood of Gazans there. I tried to upload content that explains that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and it turns out that this does not comply with “community values” either, but the content is not always blocked, as most of what I experienced after October 7 is known as “shadow bans.” "It means you upload the content, but it doesn't get any exposure, that's all."
The expert stressed that the Chinese approach to the conflict in the region is what drives its dealings with the media regarding Palestinian and Israeli content, as Beijing wants to “eliminate American hegemony over the world and establish a new world order, and they see that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gives them a lot of popularity, without risking anything.” “The Islamic and Arab street is with China, and other countries in the global south, which China claims to lead, identify with it.”
To confirm the great influence of social media in China, and the volume of views that anti-Israel content receives, he cited an example of a well-known social media influencer who was selling cosmetics in a store, where he “caused a huge stir on the Douyin platform, when he himself, on Chinese Singles’ Day, managed to... From selling $2.5 billion worth of beauty products directly in less than 24 hours,” he noted, noting that he “obtained 300 million views during that, which is more than the views of any international sporting event, with the possible exception of the FIFA World Cup.”
Although the Israeli researcher criticized the state of freedom in China and the restrictions on means of communication, he called on the Israeli government to benefit from that experience, saying that the fact that “the Chinese government is doing bad things in 1001 regions does not mean that it is not right or is not doing the right thing in other things. There are "Also a lot can be learned from the Chinese not by copying and pasting, but by knowing what is correct and what is appropriate."
"If there is something we can learn from the Chinese, it is that ultimately TikTok and Douyin are known for the fact that their algorithm is able to adjust content to the user in real time. The Chinese have realized that users may be changed by the content they receive," he added.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
