The growing friendship between China and Israel

By Barry Rubin

Barry Rubin

HERZLIYA, Israel — There is a remarkable amount of interest in China about Israel and  Jews, as I discovered during a trip to China sponsored by SIGNAL, the  Sino-Israel Global Network and Academic Leadership.

The most obvious reason is that the Chinese–one important official  called it the “little superpower–perceive that Israel in particular and  the Jewish people in general have been success stories. Ten or twenty  years ago this would have been less unique in the world.  But now, sad  to say, it stands out more because the United States and Europe, perhaps  only temporarily, are not working very well.

Of course, on a strategic level, Israel and China have some differing  interests but these are less important than they may appear to be.  China wants to have commerce with everyone, including Iran, and is  protecting Syria in the international framework.

Yet China has significantly reduced energy imports from Iran in order  to show support for the international efforts against Iran’s nuclear  drive and clear signals have been sent to Tehran. Clearly, Chinese  interests don’t benefit from Tehran having a nuclear arsenal and being a  destabilizing force in the region. As for Syria, Israel’s position on  whether the current regime should be overthrown has not been  unambiguous. The Chinese argue that a radical Islamist government worse than the current one in Damascus may well come to power. That is not  clear but the concern is a reasonable one, especially because U.S.  policy is supporting the Islamists in Syria.

Israel and China also have many parallel interests, among them the  desire for stability in the Middle East and the hope that revolutionary  Islamism doesn’t spread. And China’s policy of dealing with all other  countries has another side, since it will not let its relationships with  Israel be interfered with by any possible Arab or Iranian demands.  Indeed, if China decides to become the main customer for Israeli natural  gas and oil exports, the Jerusalem-Beijing relationship may be Israel’s  most important link, second only to the one with the United States.

Another factor which should not be underestimated is the lack of  Chinese prejudice toward Jews and prejudgment against Israel that has  become such a huge obstacle for Israel’s dealing with the West.

Most important of all, is China’s emphasis on economic and social  development, the priority on raising living standards and achieving  national success rather than such typically regrettable goals of  expanding their territory, getting revenge for past grievances, and  preferring pragmatic solutions to imposing ideological rigidity on  problems.

There is a huge amount of cooperation, far more than many people  realize, on joint projects. While hi-technology is the most obvious area  of such activity, there are many others as well. Energy issues are  equally paramount. China shares with Israel a great interest in finding  alternative energy sources, not so much due to environmental  considerations but to financial and security ones. Some impressive ideas   and pilot programs are underway that seem more imaginative and likely to succeed than what I’ve seen in the American debate.

Several Israel and Jewish programs have opened in different  universities; students are studying Hebrew and other relevant topics;  Chinese bookstores contain multiple volumes about Jewish and Israeli  achievements without—unlike some other Asian countries–exhibiting  antisemitism. Obviously, those interested in these things is  proportionately tiny in the world’s most populous country. But this  sector has reached a size significant enough to sustain itself and to  influence the broader society.

On a humorous level, when a Chinese colleague told me, whether  accurately or otherwise, that his people’s culture entailed always being  optimistic and believing in a better future, I responded that the  Israeli and Jewish characteristic was to be pessimistic and then make  jokes about it.

Seriously, though, there are a number of important points—certainly  seen as such by those Chinese who think about it—in common.  Among the  points that figure on this list are a mutual experience of a long  history of civilization, wide dispersion, emphasis on the importance of  education, readiness to work hard, focus on family, and suffering of  persecution. If contemporary Jews and Israelis have lost some of these  values, perhaps renewing them might learn something from China.

Of course, we can have criticisms of contemporary Chinese politics  and policies but it is also important not to cling to outdated notions.   I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on China—though I once thought  seriously of pursuing that career path—but my visits to the country go  back to 1974, when the word totalitarian could accurately have been  applied.

But China is no longer the country of the Cultural Revolution and the  time of great repression. It has turned toward capitalism and opened up  a much wider margin of freedom. The real power of personal initiative  has been unleashed and the results have been awesome. I doubt whether  any country has made such rapid progress in social and economic  development so fast in history.

But here’s an equally important point. While these changes are  theoretically reversible, I—and a lot of Chinese people—don’t think this   is going to happen. A course seems set in which freedoms will continue   to expand in the decades to come. Equally, there seems to be a genuine   appreciation—as there has been in the West but there certainly hasn’t been in the Middle East—that the old strategies of war to seize  territory and empire-building abroad are obsolete.

An Egyptian friend visited China a few years ago and asked a  counterpart, “China has been the victim of so much oppression and  imperialism. How do you deal with that?”

The response was, “We got over it.” The Egyptian was astonished, but  as a liberal Arab he realized that his own society would be far better  off if it eschewed the politics of revenge, bitter hatred, and the angry  assertion of superiority on the basis of an inferiority complex. Of  course, the Arabic-speaking world has unfortunately been moving in the  opposite direction with predictably terrible results. In contrast,  Israel and China focus on positive national construction, raising living   standards, and seeking peace.

What’s important for Israel, then, is to work with this process of  events in China rather than to underestimate it isn’t happening or focus  only on a negative side that is becoming smaller over time. Given  Europe’s regrettable decline and hostility—which should not be  overestimated but must be seriously evaluated—looking east seems the  sensible global strategy for Israel in the coming decades.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.G LORIA Center site: http://www.gloria-center.org He may be contacted at barry.rubin@sdjewishworld.com. .