Over the last week, China has unleashed a torrent of criticism of the United States for its response to Israel’s assault on civilian centers in Gaza.
While China has used its position as Chair of the United Nations Security Council to hold emergency meetings, propose resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and condemn violence against civilians, Washington has effectively acted as a diplomatic shield for Israel. It has vetoed three resolutions, including the Chinese proposal, and resisted applying any meaningful diplomatic pressure on Tel Aviv for weeks before taking credit for helping to broker a ceasefire “behind the scenes” on Friday.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said that the United States is “standing on the opposite side of international justice.” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian argued that “China upholds international fairness and justice, while the U.S. only cares about its own interests,” while spokeswoman Hua Chunying suggested the US was being “hypocritical” and “indifferent to the suffering of Muslims,” no doubt relieved to have something to deflect attention from China’s own campaign of repression and human rights violations against Muslims in Xinjiang.
Wang Yi also offered a “Four-Point Proposal” for peace, which should look familiar to anyone who follows China’s involvement in the Middle East. The proposal embraced what has been called the “international consensus” position on the Israel-Palestine conflict; that is to say, it was relatively uncontroversial. It calls for an end to the blockade of Gaza, an immediate ceasefire with humanitarian aid, and for “both sides” to restrain themselves from violence against civilians – but “Israel must exercise restraint in particular.” Beijing also endorsed a negotiated two-state solution as a long-term settlement, based on the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.
China’s has now repeatedly put itself at the forefront of the issue and raised it with its diplomatic allies around the world, which seems to reflect a genuine opinion held by Chinese political and academic elites: that “no unrest, no escalation in the region” is in the best interest of China and its substantial relations with both the Arab states and Israel. Political analyst Li Guofu calls the conflict "the core problem of the region" that requires a “just and long-lasting solution,” while continued instability “has negative implications for economic cooperation between China and many states in the region.”
China’s position, however, is not actually intended to get China deeply involved in negotiations, or at least is unlikely to have that result. While China has offered humanitarian aid, a summit, and to host international solidarity conferences, it has not exerted any actual pressure directly on Israel. Nor does it seem likely to do so.
Just last month, Israeli President Reuvin Rivlin met with Chinese Ambassador Cai Run and stressed his desire to further develop Sino-Israeli ties. Cai “pledged to work with friends in both countries...to advance the China-Israel innovative comprehensive partnership.”
Although China doesn’t have a huge investment in Israel, relations between Israel and China are important for reasons that go beyond trade volume. Israel provides China with substantial access to advanced technology, military hardware, and R&D know-how that can be integrated into local firms and bypass U.S. attempts to restrict China’s access. Israel also sees China as an important economic partner, as China is the second-largest buyer of Israeli exports and the Jewish state imports more products from China than from any other country except the United States. Neither side is likely to make any moves to fundamentally threaten this partnership.
China also has a long history of instrumentalizing the Palestinian conflict to achieve its diplomatic aims, even if drawing on genuinely held ideological positions and sympathies. From 1955 to 1992, China consistently denounced Israel and supported the Palestinians in terms that would be considered unthinkable today, such as calling Zionism “racism” and urging Palestinians to fight to the death.
Although it provided small arms and diplomatic support to the PLO and other militant groups in the early 1960s, China quickly abandoned this strategy when it was protested by Arab states, especially Jordan, threatened by the movements it helped arm. In any event, Beijing’s assistance to the PLO paled in comparison to Soviet and U.S. support for their chosen proxies. China moderated its tone in the early 1970s, but anti-Israeli rhetoric persisted through the 1990s as part of China’s diplomacy with the Arab world.
So why dial up the rhetoric at this moment? First, China has a long-term strategy of expanding its diplomatic footprint in the Middle East. The first time it attempted to directly address Palestinian and Israeli concerns was 2013 when President Xi Jinping put forth a “Four-Point Plan for Peace” to Mahmoud Abbas during a state visit. It has also dramatically expanded its diplomatic and economic ties with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, and Iran in recent years.
This diplomatic offensive is clearly intended to support its economic strategy, namely the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is based on cultivating economic, industrial and infrastructural ties with a large swath of Muslim nations along the ancient Silk Road. It allows China to be seen acting as a neutral partner that can be trusted by all, and one which does not directly intervene in human rights issues with heavy-handed sanctions, but rather by calling for negotiations and cultivating ties with all parties. The aim is to depict Beijing as a reliable economic partner.
Furthermore, China is eager to deflect criticism about its forced re-education of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, among other human rights violations. Although Xinjiang has not become a major issue in Middle Eastern countries, Beijing is acutely aware that it is damaging its brand in the West, and that it has the potential to spill over to its Muslim partners. This point was made explicitly by Hua Chunying as she criticized Washington for blocking the Chinese UNSC resolution: “At the same time, the U.S., based on lies and political prejudice, has colluded with Germany, the UK and some of its other allies to hold a meaningless meeting on Xinjiang in the name of the United Nations. The U.S. should understand that the lives of the Palestinian Muslims are just as precious.”
Ultimately, it is Biden’s own handling of the crisis that has given China the opening to go on the diplomatic offensive. While Biden finally made clear last Wednesday that he wanted Israel to halt its bombing, his failure to take that position early in the fighting, as well as his repeated insistence that “Israel has a right to defend itself” enabled Beijing to take full advantage of growing international exasperation. Even then, Biden’s public pressure on Netanyahu came only after word of talks between the two sides broke in the press, and progressive Democrats in Congress had begun speaking out more forcefully. This johnny-come-lately attitude reflects only a desire to belatedly seem on the side of peace, after not only providing diplomatic cover for Israeli violence, but also callously approving a $735 million weapons contract to Israel even as evidence of intentional targeting of civilians and journalists by the IDF was emerging.
Neither China nor the United States seems willing to use its position as a major Israeli economic partner to pressure the Jewish state into meaningful change. Any Chinese mediation would require Israel to actively invite China into the conflict, a most unlikely prospect given Washington’s steadfast support. Meanwhile, if Beijing truly wants to promote the cause of peace and the Palestinian people, it will have to go beyond rhetorical support, academic conferences, and doomed resolutions.
