Ally in the Making

By Herb Keinon
Excerpted from The Jerusalem Post, 3 Feb. 2005

On the face of it, especially when looking at the world through jaundiced Jewish eyes, the recent warming of Israeli-Chinese ties doesn't make a whole lot of sense…State Counselor Tang Jiaxuan, whose unrevealing title doesn't do justice to the fact he is one of the six most powerful men in China, arrived in December at the head of the highest level delegation to visit Israel since the Phalcon fiasco. Both sides characterized that visit as excellent. "He came with one purpose in mind," a senior Israeli official said, "to further economic cooperation."

Indeed, at a friendly meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, during which neither the Harpy drone nor the Phalcon came up once, the two leaders agreed to try to double Israeli-Chinese trade to some $5 billion by 2008. "Our relations are good," says Yigal Caspi, head of the northeast Asia department at the Foreign Ministry. "Tang's visit is an indication of this, as well as of the Chinese desire to continue to have good ties with Israel, to cooperate in scientific and technological ties with us."

And since Tang's visit, the Chinese delegations haven't stopped arriving: a delegation from the Communist Party central committee, an election observer team to monitor the PA elections, China's ambassador to Syria, the deputy staff general of the Peoples Armed Police (the Chinese version of border patrol) and a foreign ministry delegation. And coming up is a delegation of 20 members of the People's Armed Police to undergo an anti-terror training course.

Lu Jing, the political affairs counselor at the Chinese embassy in Tel Aviv, says that more delegations from China arrived in the month of January alone than arrived in any given year since 2000. While Lu, who also serves as the embassy's spokesman, indicated that the increase in the number of delegations coming to Israel is a signal of better days, not everyone agrees. One Israeli diplomat says that the relations have not fundamentally changed of late, and all that has really changed is that Yasser Arafat has died.

Arafat was the plug in the dyke that kept away official Chinese delegations. Or, more accurately, Israel's policy of snubbing officials who met Arafat was a major disincentive over the past two years for Chinese visitors. The Chinese are not the Europeans, who were largely able to bypass the ban by visiting Arafat on one trip, and then returning a few months later and visiting Israel. When the Chinese arrive they come with bulky delegations, and they are not going to make that long trip twice…

Why would a country like China, which is now feeling its oats and is widely considered the world's most serious challenger to US global hegemony, make overtures to a country like Israel? Especially at a time when, as a result of its economic success, China has in the last decade gone from an oil exporter to an oil importer and recently inked a $75 billion multi-year energy-contract with Iran. And at a time when both the Phalcon and Harpy episodes show that the one thing the Chinese truly covet from Israel - hi-tech military hardware and software - will still not be coming their way.

In addition, Israel and China don't exactly share a democratic tradition, nor core religious values - the mortar that cements Israel's ties with the US. So why the Chinese interest? This type of question, Lu intimates, is only asked by those who sell themselves short. "We admire the Jewish people so much," says Lu… "Israel is such a strong country, surrounded by hostile countries for more than 50 years. It has achieved so much. This is a strong reason for the country to be admired by the rest of the world." As Chinese officials are frequently prone to do when speaking about Israel, Lu soon slips easily into a discourse about how the Jews and the Chinese have a fond history and similar values. "The Jewish people and the Chinese people are similar," he says. "We enjoy the same family values, saving money, hard work, importance of education." This is all said very matter-of-factly, with no trace of malice harking back to any kind of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Lu talks about the Jewish genius, and mentions Einstein, Marx and even Lenin, who he insists was half Jewish. The Chinese diplomat's message is clear: The Jews are smart, they have given the world some very smart people; so even without the arms deals, it's worth working closely with the Jewish state.

This attitude, says Reuven Merhav, a former Foreign Ministry director-general who pioneered Israeli-Chinese relations in the late Eighties, is reflective of the Chinese attitude. "They have a real appreciation of Jews," says Merhav, who as Israel's consul-general in Hong Kong in the mid-Eighties established an Israeli academic and scientific liaison office in Beijing that became Israel's embassy there. "They appreciate the Jewish intellect." In addition, he says, the paving of ties with China was made easier because the Chinese are not burdened by any anti-Semitic baggage. "When we came to talk with them, the table was clean, there was no [historic] anti-Semitism," he notes. "But, let's face it, the Chinese don't want to be Israel's friend just because some of our co-religionists happen to be - or were in the past - super smart. This certainly helps, but is not reason enough. Good relations with Israel serve a number of key Chinese strategic interests," Merhav says.

The Chinese, Merhav maintains, bring three perspectives to the table when interacting with the nations of world: how it fits in with their view of themselves as a superpower; how it fits in with their self-perceived role - by virtue of their being one of the five permanent UN Security Council members - as a member of the world's board of directors, with all the concomitant responsibilities; and what is the nature of the bilateral relations.

When Israel and China formally established ties in 1992, what interested them - at least from a bilateral point of view - was Israel's ability to provide China with state-of-art weaponry. Indeed, even before the formal relationship, Israel was supplying China with hundreds of millions of dollars of arms a year. A study in the Nineties by the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency estimated Israel's total arms exports to China between 1984 and 1994 at $5.7 billion, or an annual average of about $526 million. If that was the situation before formal ties were established, the expectation was that this aspect of the relationship would grow enormously when the countries established formal ties. But then the US - worried about sophisticated technology in the hands of a country it perceives as potential military foe - intervened and squashed the $1.2 billion sale of the Phalcon.

The Phalcon fiasco, says Merhav, was more than anything a personal insult to then Chinese president Jiang Zemin, who in April 2000 paid a state visit to Israel, was pictured lollygagging in the Dead Sea, and was given assurances that the sale would go through. But then it didn't. Ties nose-dived until 2002, when Israel agreed to pay China $300 million for pulling out of the deal, and Shimon Peres, who was then foreign minister, went to China to deliver the good news. Ties improved, but the damage remained. Now, while the Chinese are well aware of Israel's strong ties with Washington, they see the relationship running both ways, says China expert Yitzhak Shichor of Haifa University. Although they recognize the influence Washington has on Jerusalem, he says, they also believe Israel has a grand capacity to influence US policy. "The Chinese believe that if Israel would have wanted to, they could have influenced the US to give in on both the Phalcon and the drones," he maintains. "They think Israel has an enormous amount of influence in the US, and didn't use it in these cases."

While readily pointing to the shared values and similarities between Jews and Chinese, Lu says in recounting the Phalcon incident that one value the Chinese could introduce to Israel is "keeping faith, integrity." "This is very important in our social life, and also in dealing with bilateral relations," he says. "No matter how much I hate someone, I must show him my respect. And I must keep my word. Failing to do so is a breach of something very important in our tradition."…

The scuttling of the Phalcon deal took place in July 2000, just a few months before the outbreak of the Palestinian violence in September of that year. And when the violence hit, China - which had begun tilting away from its reflexive anti-Israel public stance to a more nuanced public diplomacy regarding Israel - reverted to its old patterns of fierce public criticism. And it did so with a vengeance, culminating in what Israeli diplomats said were some articles in the Chinese press during Operation Defensive Shield that bordered on the anti-Semitic. And yet, when basic interests are at stake, time has a way of healing, especially if accompanied by the balm of a $300-million breach of contract payment. "We have realized that what happened with the plane is not only the fault of the Israeli government," Lu says. Referring to the US, he adds, "There were some external factors involved as well. We have to look forward, not backward. This relationship is mutually beneficial for both countries."

This reference to the US as an "external factor" popped up in a press conference Tang gave in Jerusalem in December, but in this case it was in reference to the Harpy drone issue, not the Phalcon. "We cooperate with Israel in many fields, and all this cooperation serves the fundamental interests of both sides, and none of them violate the interest of any third parties," Tang says when asked about the controversy surrounding the drones. "Our cooperation has always been normal and healthy and not targeted against any third country, and that is why any interference, intervention or disturbance from any other country in the world is groundless and unreasonable in this matter."

As "groundless and unreasonable" as it may have been, the "third party" interference was there, and it worked - at least partly. In 1994, Israel sold China Harpy drones, a killer drone that hovers over enemy anti-missile batteries and radar systems and then destroys them by diving into them. The Chinese recently returned one of the drones to Israel for an upgrade, and the US reportedly called on Israel to confiscate it, so as not to upset the military balance between China and Taiwan. After weeks of back and forth on the matter, Israel - according to Lu - decided not to upgrade the drone. But rather than confiscate it, Jerusalem just sent it back to
Beijing. One senior Foreign Ministry official at the time dramatically - indeed, over-dramatically - framed the dilemma in terms of Israel being forced to choose between China and the US. Surely, such a choice is a no-brainer. As Shichor says, "If you ask which is more important, the US or China, there is no argument. If we have a problem in the region, China will not come to our aid, and the US will."

And China itself has begrudgingly come to understand this consideration. Lu says that Beijing's more understanding response to the Harpy issue than to the Phalcon is due to its attempt to "put ourselves in your boots. We were more tolerant this time around," Lu says. "We never scolded the Israeli side. We just wanted to let the issue get resolved quietly, and not let it damage the bilateral ties. I can't say we are satisfied, but while last time we publicly expressed our outrage, this time we kept everything in. We learned a lesson, and didn't want to turn it into a big issue. This is only one aspect of our relationship."

WHILE REJECTING the premise that relations with China need to come at the expense of Israel's relations with the US, Lu admits that because of US concerns, relations with Israel have their limits, that there is a glass ceiling. But, as Merhav asks, what relationship doesn't have limits? At the end of the day, says Jonathan Rynhold, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University's political science department, who teaches a course in China's foreign policy, the US will not let Israel develop independent, sky-is-the-limit relations with China. But both he and Shichor question the wisdom of this policy. An Israeli-Chinese military relationship, Rynhold argues, has a valuable intelligence component that could actually benefit the US. "Israel had connections with the military that they didn't have," he says…

Nevertheless, Lu says China's interest in Israel does not only revolve around arms. China is extremely interested in Israeli technology, and advances in medicine and communication. "We are a developing nation, with a large number of people beneath the poverty line," he says. "We have a large part of our population living in the countryside. We can learn from Israeli hi-tech in agriculture, and in building settlements in deserts and in remote areas." It is precisely helping China in its mammoth modernization effort where Israel can be of most help, says Rynhold. "At the end of the day, the Arabs can only provide them with one basic resource," he says, referring to oil and the growing Chinese dependence on its importation. "But Israel can help with technology. China lags very far behind in developing patents, they are not good at that sort of thing. Israel is, so it makes for a good match." But what Israel has to offer China does not end with a computer chip. "The Chinese have undertaken a strategic assessment, and understand our weight and importance in the region," Merhav says. "They understand that nothing in the Middle East will move without us."

Many countries give lip service to a yearning for peace and stability in the Middle East, including Russia and China. But whereas there are those in Jerusalem who believe that Moscow is more interested in the diplomatic process gives them international standing, China is genuinely interested in stability. Oil fuels the Chinese economic engine, and some 50% of its energy needs now come from the Middle East. Stability here is turning into a vital Chinese strategic interest. "The Chinese realize that in order to influence what goes on here, they have to have a relationship with Israel," Shichor says. "In the past, they only had influence on the Palestinians and the Arabs; they want some on Israel as well." Which explains why…China seems determined - as was evident during Tang's visit in December - to come back for more.

If Israel had any moral scruples, say some foreign policy moral purists, it would place its eggs in democratic Taiwan's basket, and not in that of mainland China, which isn't exactly the world's beacon of freedom and human rights. "Get serious," reply diplomatic officials in Jerusalem, who point out that Israel's policy toward Taiwan follows the lead of the US and most of the free world. What this means is that Israel has a business interest office in Taipei, not an embassy, and that it is very mindful of Beijing's reaction when deciding what type of business to do with Taiwan. For instance, while the US does sell arms to Taiwan, Israel does not, in order not to upset the Chinese. Israel and Taiwan flirted over the possible sale of 40 Kfir fighter planes in the early 1990s, but the idea went nowhere, and was finally nixed in 1992, the year formal ties were established with Beijing.

Defense Ministry Director-General Amos Yaron was quoted in 2002 in the Defense News as saying, "China is a very important country for us and we do not want to initiate anything that can put us in a situation where our relationship [with Beijing] will suffer. There is no chance of changing our policy regarding Taiwan." Which doesn't mean there is no trade. There is, and it is robust, to the tune of about $1 billion a year - but it is civilian. Israeli-Chinese trade, by comparison, was $2.4 billion in 2004, with the goal of doubling that by 2008. Taiwan also plays another dimension in Israeli-Chinese relations, the reason Israeli officials use to rationalize China's consistently poor voting record on Israel at the UN. "The Chinese are petrified about losing votes in the UN on issues regarding Taiwan," one official said. "So as a result, they vote with the Arab bloc to ensure that the Arab bloc will vote for them. They don't want to take any chances." The official said this is an issue that does come up from time to time with the Chinese, but not something Israel is willing to go the mat over. "I am from the pragmatic school," the official said, adding that for Israel "the bread is buttered" in Beijing, not at General Assembly votes in the UN. Nor, he may very well have added, in Taipei.