Shanghai, China
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.
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. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
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