Recently, when covering an investment dispute between a border-area kibbutz in Israel and a Chinese investment fund, some media outlets claimed that “China prohibits investment in Israel.” The Embassy of China in Israel has issued a clarification on this matter through Channel 12.
After the outbreak of the Gaza conflict on October 7, 2023, China adjusted the travel risk level for areas within Israel in line with international practices. As the situation has eased, areas classified as extremely high risk (red) have been significantly reduced and are now limited to small areas around the north border and along the Gaza Stripe border.
Strictly limiting personnel movements and economic activities in extremely high-risk areas is an international practice. Restrictions on economic activities in small, extremely high-risk areas should not be confused with the normal economic and trade exchanges between China and most areas in Israel.
China encourages Israeli friends to engage with us in various forms of economic and trade cooperation, and hopes that all sectors will actively safeguard China-Israel relations and play an active role in advancing bilateral friendship and practical cooperation.
Look, I get why people are reacting emotionally to this. But a lot of these comments are using this story as a launchpad for some pretty unserious conclusions.
“China does nothing.”
“China doesn’t care about anyone outside its borders.”
“I only support China because the alternative is the West.”
“They may as well exist on another planet.”
“China supports the Zionist entity.”
This is supposed to be a communist space. Where is the dialectical and historical materialism? Where is the analysis beyond “this feels bad”? Giving up the right to moral outrage divorced from material analysis is one of the many unfortunate parts necessary of becoming a communist.
“China does nothing” is straight-up CIA talking points/meme warfare. The CPC very obviously does things, if you spend even a few minutes looking through a material lens as opposed to a moral one. The DPRK exists as a modern AES state thanks to Chinese backing. Cuba has substantial solar infrastructure (even if still insufficient) because of China. Much of the Global South now has alternatives to IMF austerity and structural adjustment because China created parallel non-imperialist development channels.
China also clearly cares about people beyond her borders. What people actually seem upset about is that the CPC refuses to sacrifice China’s own stability, development, and security to satisfy Western-style moral posturing. That’s not a “lack of internationalism.” It’s important to separate internationalism from performative self-immolation. China does not yet have the strength to wage total war against the Western world and it’s dogs.
It also matters to be precise: trade is not the same thing as political alignment or military support. Mao explicitly addressed this. Trading with a country does not equal endorsing its actions or assisting its wars. The USSR traded with fascist states while materially supporting anti-fascist struggle. The distinction is whether you are actually aiding resistance, not whether commodity exchange exists and it is pretty clear China is backing the resistance even if they won’t start WWIII.
People also keep acting like severing trade with Israel is some low-cost gesture. It very clearly isn’t. Israel functions as a U.S. forward operating base and Euro-American tech hub. Any serious unilateral economic break would immediately trigger retaliation from Washington and it’s lackeys. Pretending otherwise is idealist nonsense. States operate in a world of force relations and kicking the kings favourite dog is a good way to have that force turned on you.
Does China’s foreign policy involve ugly realpolitik? Yes. Is it extremely frustrating at times? Also yes. But pretending China does nothing or is indifferent to global suffering requires ignoring material reality. China’s entire strategy is about surviving imperialist containment while slowly weakening Western monopoly over development pathways. That’s a long game. It’s not pretty, and it’s not emotionally satisfying, but it’s material.
If your “analysis” begins and ends with “this makes me uncomfortable,” or “this is morally wrong” divorced from material analysis, you are doing liberal moralism, not scientific socialism.
I usually find the consensus and conversation on here grounded and method-driven. This thread has been slightly disappointing.
big china L, and goes to show they don’t give much of a fuck about internationalism, or anything going on outside their borders really.
China encourages Israeli friends to engage with us in various forms of economic and trade cooperation, and hopes that all sectors will actively safeguard China-Israel relations and play an active role in advancing bilateral friendship and practical cooperation.
Why does China have to have such cringe foreign politics?
Having to support China because the alternative is the west is just emblematic of how hard socialism lost the ideological battle in the 80s
i don’t just support china because the alternative is the west. i think china is based as fuck and they’re doing some incredible things, and not to make excuses for them but the Ls they take are also in the context of the world we live in, where israel is a US puppet state and aggression towards israel economic or otherwise will be met with aggression from the US in retaliation
I dont think China particularly cares about suffering if it doesn’t happen to her own people
i keep making this point, but abandoning trade with entity would have been much cheaper for china re:etim/xinjiang, i don’t think 20 billion in trade (so 2-3 billion in profit yearly) is worth whatever security theater they are doing in xinjiang. meanwhile saying to your local population look guys, we did it, stop being recruited by alq.
that aside entity is helping taiwan anyway, so business interests they are achieving are very transitory for the state itself
they are doing in xinjiang. meanwhile saying to your local population look guys, we did it, stop being recruited by alq.
What makes you think the recruitment/radicalization pitch from the CIA puppet jihadists in Xinjiang was based around China doing trade with “israel” or that it rested on that and would fall on that alone?
Usually the radicalization pitch is something along the lines of “this is TRUE Islam, you are living under the rule of heretics, atheists, etc, you must establish strict Islamic law or you are all living in sin not according to the will of the one true god” and of course some stuff about piety, sincere adherence, how going further and demanding these things makes you a strong Muslim and so on. Sure they might toss in some concerns about the zionist entity on the side as slander but they’re not really basing it off any strong anti-colonialist sentiment nor trying to nurture these people around that because then they might slip out of China, pick up guns and attack the zionist entity when what they want them hating and attacking is China and what they want them doing is destabilizing it and/or best case scenario establishing an extremist break-away caliphate on its borders.
This makes sense from a purely profit based view but as far as I can tell the technology transfer is the far more important reason they are keeping ties as opposed to solely profit.
the transfer of mysterious medical devices? they got that roughly covered, would be nice kick for the local producers, if anything
I won’t pretend to know exactly what the deal is, because I don’t. However the Zionist entity has been made into a major tech hub by the Europeans and Americans. I believe it is highly likely China is recieving something more than meager profit to make dealing with them worth the hassle. Tech transfer is what makes the most sense in my mind. However if anyone has any particular sources or analysis I’m definitely open to hearing it.
I haven’t kept up with the details but I remember 5-7 years ago Israel was trading weapons tech to China that the US was withholding
I was thinking as much. If you had any sources on that it would be great. Tech transfer through the imperialists attack dog that’s looking out for itself first, especially tech that the rest of the imperialists are attempting to withhold makes a lot of sense in the context as I understand it and helps contextualise a lot of the less palatable realpolitik.
Why does China have to have such cringe foreign politics?
Originally to achieve equidistance with the USSR and USA after the Sino-Soviet split, then to survive the fall of the USSR, nowadays because non-interference is the core principle of their foreign policy. They just do not do embargos, boycotts or sanctions. They do not do “humanitarian interventions”. They do not go and and object to another nation’s actions on moral / human rights grounds because such reasonings are being used continuously as a pretext to oppose and harm them.
Mind you, i obviously disagree with this decision, i am not defending it in any way and i am not interested in debating if it can be critically supported or not, i am just laying out how they go about such matters.
it was pretty disappointing heaps of hexbears roundly applauded this headline without investigation.
this was TEXTBOOK zionist crybullying but it made the PRC shine good so why bother reading into it
I mean it would be pretty sick.
I can’t fault people for wishful thinking. Most don’t use social media to do investigations or serious self education and are desperate for good news too. An absolute plus are good news that are causing drama with your enemies.
It was very quickly debunked when the article first came out. I don’t think many of us were under any illusions
U ultras never understand that actually building socialism requires selling security systems to fascists
Don’t you see, we’re all ultras down here sweaty.
Everyone more left than me is an ultra, everyone less left than me is a liberal
Once again china less cool than their critics claim.
Every time
China being lame news at 11
just for the record, we did NOT do anything to stop the genocide of palestinians. we would never do ANYTHING that could be construed as giving a shit about them
I simply would not have said anything and let everyone think i was one of the good ones.
I didn’t believe it when it was first reported, I don’t have any illusions about the modern PRC. The only AES that still practices Internationalism is Cuba.
DPRK
Good thing China is giving all those solar farms to Cuba so Cuba can single handledly practice internationalism
Just when you thought China did a bare minimum good thing regarding pissrael lmao
Ok, where is the Chinese Epstein?Sad as fuck
truly don’t have non-porky instincts
