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China is burning all its bridges with Israel
(asia.nikkei.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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As a Chinese person, when I was very young, I learned from books that "the Jewish people are a wise people; they put honey on books to let children know that knowledge is sweet." Before I went to university at 18, I believed that Jews were very smart, like Einstein. All my knowledge came from books. After I started university, I got my first mobile phone, and then I started accessing the internet. This led to a collapse of my worldview, as some things I had firmly believed in began to be questioned by myself. My perception of Jews was just one of many aspects that changed.
Chinese people do not discriminate against Jews. As I experienced, due to widespread propaganda, Jews have a generally positive and subtle reputation in China. The situation is more like a backlash caused by a mismatch between the promotional image and the actual product. Previously, Jews were portrayed as very wise and polite, but when the reality turned out to be different, people felt deceived, which led to what the article calls "anti-Semitism." However, in fact, on the Chinese internet, people are just bringing up the wrongdoings that some Jews have done.
Among Jews, there are both good and bad people. I support Jewish Voice for Peace and believe that a wandering people should not be discriminated against anywhere. However, Zionists want to hijack all Jews, using the concentration camps from World War II as an emotional card to coerce everyone onto their bandwagon. When the actions of Israel in Gaza reach China, almost all Chinese people are reminded of the atrocities committed by Japanese fascists in China, treating Chinese people like livestock for slaughter. The suffering of the Palestinians makes us empathize deeply. When their homes are destroyed and their relatives killed, it is reminiscent of our past. I saw a group of Israelis holding hands and dancing in front of UN emergency relief supplies to block the aid. It tore my heart apart. I don't know what to say, I can only say that the Palestinians are incredibly enduring. If it were me and most Chinese people, we simply couldn't endure it.
China has never oppressed or persecuted Jews. China even sheltered Jews in Shanghai, and the current Prime Minister of Israel has praised this. But ironically, it seems that now China still does not compare to Germany in the eyes of Israel.
What a strange strange comment. Why are you talking about how "Jews" were "portrayed" to be "wise" but then "the promotional image didn't match the product"?
Which should go entirely without saying, which is why your comment is so strange. You keep talking about "Jews" as an entity that has a "promotional image" and that you perceive collectively as "smart like Einstein", or not.
This is a difference between China and foreign countries. Let me explain:
I was born in 2001. When I started school, it was around 2008 in elementary school until 2019 when I finished high school. Many students didn't have mobile phones, and the internet was often seen by parents as something that affected our studies. The limited computer time we had was almost entirely used for playing video games. Apart from learning about pre-2000 foreign history in school, my main sources of external information were from newsstands outside the school and magazines bought by my parents. In these magazines, the images of foreigners were constructed: I believed Americans were innovative, Germans were rigorous, British were gentlemanly, French were romantic, Russians were bold, and Jews were wise. Due to the actions of parents and schools, education in China before high school was quite closed off. It wasn't until 2015, when I had to memorize Xi Jinping's new thoughts on green development in politics class, that I realized the current leader of China was no longer Hu Jintao. For those of us who had only study on our minds before entering college, there is a specific term in China: "small-town exam-takers."
When I got to college and had my own mobile phone, being able to browse the internet without a very purposeful mindset, it coincided with a "major upheaval." The rhetoric in those magazines that deliberately praised foreigners was heavily criticized in 2019. It was seen as deliberately arguing for the inferiority of Chinese people. Let me give you a few examples so you can understand what I saw as a child:
The sewage system in the former German-leased area of Qingdao had been operating efficiently for over a century. When some parts needed replacement, the original company no longer existed. A German company sent an email saying that, according to their construction standards, there should be a small storage room within three meters of the worn-out parts where spare parts could be found. The urban construction company found the small storage room in the sewer, and inside, the spare parts were still shiny and new, wrapped in oilcloth.
During a summer camp between Japanese and Chinese children, each child had to carry a 20kg backpack for a 50km hike. The Chinese children soon gave up, but the Japanese children persevered. The Chinese children couldn't endure the hardship and were not as tough as the Japanese children (my teacher even told us to learn from the Japanese children).
Once in America, a sparrow got tangled in an exposed high-voltage wire by the roadside. Its distressing cries caught the attention of passersby, who immediately called for help. After multiple levels of authorization, the rescue workers eventually got approval from the President within half an hour to send a special plane to cut the national power line in Washington, causing a temporary blackout across the U.S. to save the sparrow.
I learned all three of these from books. Of course, you might say, what kind of nonsense is this, it's completely fabricated. This rhetoric wasn't meant for foreigners; it was actually used as internal propaganda within China. Afterward, it was tied together with the "toxic textbooks" incident (where illustrations in elementary school textbooks deliberately depicted Chinese children as ugly and foreigners as attractive), which was believed to be a deliberate attempt by some foreign enemies and domestic traitors to prove that Chinese people couldn't achieve the same accomplishments as foreigners, thereby belittling Chinese people. This is why I mentioned that Jews indeed have a "promotional image" in China.
In 2019, the Chinese internet was like a chaotic battlefield with all sorts of ideas, from the most peaceful to the most extreme, from the far left to the far right. I once received very hurtful insults for expressing left-wing views on a Chinese platform called Zhihu (similar to Quora). Mutual personal attacks are not uncommon.Now the Chinese internet is still influenced by this, which is why I find Lemmy to be a great environment. At least here, we are having discussions instead of cursing each other with voodoo dolls. 😆
In the US, there are positive and negative stereotypes, too. German efficiency and Japanese perfectionism and perseverance are among them. Jewish intelligence and commitment to education, too. These things have a basis in reality, of course, but they shouldn't be mistaken for reality itself. It seems to me these things appearing in your textbooks were probably attempts by your own government to get its people to emulate what it sees as positive traits in other cultures, rather than an attempt by foreign adversaries to paint Chinese people as inferior. Of course, when the message was a little too unclear or negative as in the "toxic textbooks" incident, your government deflected blame.
It seems that the saying "the moon is brighter abroad" applies to many countries. China's situation might be a bit more unique, so let me explain in more detail. Since you are American, some of the descriptions below might sound offensive to you. I apologize for that and will try to stick to factual statements, which might help explain why many Chinese people illegally immigrate to the United States.
From the 1990s until the US-China trade war (which most people consider starting with the US sanctions on ZTE in 2018), foreign countries (especially developed countries like those in Europe and the US) were seen as paradises on Earth. Online, phrases like "Reincarnate as an American in the next life" were blessings (perhaps similar to saying "God bless you and may you go to heaven"), while "Eternally being Chinese" was considered a curse (similar to saying "I curse you to be eternally tormented in hell by Satan"). Due to online propaganda, such as "You can buy a big piece of fried chicken for one dollar in the US," "You can easily live in a 500-square-meter mansion in the US," or "Washing dishes in the US can earn you $3000 a month," many Chinese people were very attracted to these ideas and believed them to be true. Even from my perspective now, I couldn't buy 3000 pieces of chicken with a month's salary.
When the US-China trade war started, the idea of "surrendering to the US for leniency" gained traction in China. How could a developing country possibly compete with the world's leading superpower? Many supporters of China online can only believed that, in terms of military power, the US couldn't completely destroy China. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. Initially, the Chinese government's poor performance further fueled this mindset. However, as the pandemic became global, several things changed the online narrative:
You could see this as a struggle between "pro-American" and "self-reliant" factions in China. The pro-American faction had been cultivating their views for years, while the self-reliant faction garnered more support from ordinary people. The two sides fought fiercely online. However, as I mentioned, the pro-American faction's exaggerated claims about foreign countries often needed only a photo to be debunked, leading them to frequently resort to personal attacks, further diminishing their influence.
By 2022, with the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, Chinese public opinion split between supporting Russia and Ukraine. Due to differences in transliterations of the Russian president's name between Taiwan ("Puding") and mainland China ("Putin"), people suspected that Taiwan was engaging in cognitive warfare against the mainland, leading to broader suspicions that developed countries were also waging cognitive wars against China, especially Japan. The phrase "700 million yen from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs" is often used sarcastically to mock supporters of Japan.
Currently, on the Chinese internet, those who advocate for Ukraine and Israel are generally assumed to be bots or paid shills, as they can't explain their support logically. Support for Ukraine and Palestine is based on opposition to invasion, while support for Russia and Palestine aligns with China's interests. Supporting Russia and Israel suggests a belief in the power of might, but supporting both Ukraine and Israel? Chinese people wouldn't think like that.
This is why 30,000 to 40,000 Chinese people have illegally crossed from Mexico into the US. They come with suitcases, bringing their families, and often carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash. When asked by journalists why they came to the US, they repeatedly say, "For freedom and democracy." I am not at all surprised that Trump thinks these people are spies. If foreigners illegally crossed into China just to "build communism," most people would think they were crazy and wonder why they didn't just submit a migration application. The truth is that, in their eyes, the US is a "land flowing with milk and honey," similar to how Marco Polo described "China being paved with gold" (history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes🤣 ).They are actually coming to the US for a better life. Most of these people are of no use to the US and can only compete for low-threshold basic jobs, which is why they can't immigrate legally and resort to illegal entry.