Chinese Checked

By Amiram Barkat
Excerpted from HaAretz, 11/26/04

Last December, Lauren Katz, a student at Beijing University, decided to conduct a survey among her Chinese colleagues about their attitude toward Judaism and Israel. In the course of two months, Katz, an American of Jewish descent, interviewed 214 students, most of them enrolled in the Beijing Foreign Students University (BFSU). The interviewees were asked about their knowledge of and attitude toward the Jewish people, Jewish culture and religion, and the history of the Jewish people. The Holocaust immediately stood out as the most familiar subject. The best-known Jewish figure was Albert Einstein, followed by Karl Marx, Henry Kissinger and Moses. Only three of those polled expressed hostility to Israel or to Jews. On the other hand, only 32 students were aware that a differentiation must be made between Israeli politics and the Jews, with two of them noting their reason: "because not all Israelis are Jews." More than 50 percent of the interviewees said that the Jews play an important role in the world, in business, politics, or in general. A similar majority stated that they were curious about the Jews and that they would be happy to learn more about them…

Katz's initiative is one of the few attempts that have been made so far to identify the mood in China with respect to the Jews. No opinion poll based on a statistically representative sample of the Chinese people on the perception of Jews has ever been conducted. Of course, her survey does not represent the broad public, but it does reflect a widespread tendency among the future generation of China's elites. The findings of the survey are included in a new study, "China and the Jewish People," which has just been published by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (www.jpppi.org.il). This Jerusalem-based institute has been operating for about two years and is funded by the Jewish Agency and Jewish donors from North America. The study about China is intended as the first in a series of publications initiated by the institute's founding president, Prof. Yehezkel Dror, on "emerging superpowers without biblical tradition," a group that also includes countries such as India and Korea.

"The study about China is a strategic document which is intended to assist the Jewish people to prepare for the moment when China becomes a superpower," according to Avinoam Bar-Yosef, the institute's director general. According to forecasts by the experts, the event Bar-Yosef is referring to will occur during the first half of this century. American and French researchers recently estimated that by 2050 China's gross domestic product will be 75 percent larger than that of the United States and more than twice as large as that of the European Union. Israel and Jews would appear to have a great deal to lose if the United States, which is today considered their main and almost only ally, is deprived of its international dominance.

Enhancing Ties

Dr. Shalom Salomon Wald, the author of the study on China, is optimistic. In his view, with a relatively small investment, the Jews can gain a great deal by cultivating relations with China. China, he notes, does not have an anti-Semitic past and its attitude toward the Jews is characterized by curiosity, openness and originality, he says. Wald lists a series of steps that could help enhance relations between the two nations, including encouragement of productions on Jewish themes, cultivating academic activity in China in the field of Israel and Judaism studies, and establishing a permanent and representative presence in China of the main movements and streams of the Jewish people.

Wald offers a complex picture in analyzing the manner in which China views its relations with Israel on the one hand and with the Arab world on the other. Traditionally, he notes, China expresses pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab positions, but in his opinion that policy is limited mainly to rhetoric. The Arab countries' fierce objections to cooperation between China and Israel in security and other spheres has no effect on the judgment of the Chinese, he says. Wald believes that China's growing dependence on Middle Eastern oil will bring about a change in its traditional strategic conception and lead to China's increasing involvement in the Middle East. However, even this development will not necessarily lead to disengagement from Israel.

"It would be simplistic to say that China will develop dependence on Middle Eastern oil states while ignoring the dependence of the oil states, which will develop in parallel, on what will be the world's largest market. As a general comment, we can say that the Chinese always make it a point to conduct negotiations from positions of independence and strength. Cultivating relations with Israel in spite of the Muslims' protests sends precisely such a message."

…To research the study, Wald spent a few months in China. He does not speak Chinese, and his work was limited to reading books in other languages. In addition, he interviewed about 100 researchers from China, the United States and Israel, and held meetings with students in six universities in China.

Wald notes that the number of Chinese who ever met a Jew is infinitesimally small and even students of Jewish subjects in Chinese universities have mostly never seen a Jew. However, it is his contention that there is basic sympathy for Jews and for Israel among the Chinese public, precisely because of Israel's posture vis-à-vis the Arab states. "That sympathy is not always expressed in the official declarations or in the media reports, but it is very pronounced in public forums such as Internet chat sites." In his research, Wald analyzed Chinese views of Jews and grouped them under four heading: Jewish wealth, success and power; Jewish contributions to world civilization, particularly in the fields of science and technology, longevity of the Jewish people and the persecution of Jews during the ages, particularly in the Holocaust.

Israeli and other Jewish researchers support this conclusion. Rebecca Bitterman has been visiting China since the beginning of the 1980s within the framework of her position as curator of Asian art at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. As an Israeli and as a Jew, she says, she never encountered a negative approach. "The characteristic reaction of the person on the street is to link Israel with force and the Jews with cleverness and wealth, but in the positive sense."

One of the researchers this writer spoke with maintained that Israel's force-driven behavior actually reinforces the esteem in which it is held by many Chinese, against the background of powerful negative and even racist feelings toward Muslims that are widespread in Chinese society. Prof. Andrew Plaks, an expert on Chinese literature from Princeton University who also teaches in Israel, notes that his impression is that "as a whole, the reports in the Chinese media about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are far more balanced than those in Europe, for example."

Wald, though, says that the reports about developments in the territories and in Iraq are inciting the Muslim minority in China against Israel and the Jews. According to unofficial estimates, there are up to 40 million Muslims in China, double the number of Muslim migrants in Europe. In China, though, in contrast to Europe, this is a negligible minority - less than 3 percent of the population.

Chinese Jews

…In his study, Wald describes in detail the academic activity in the sphere of Jewish studies in China. The absence of an umbrella organization to coordinate academic activity in this area made it very difficult for him to collect the data.

Academic study of Judaism began in China only after the death of Mao Zedong, in 1976. There are now between eight and ten academic centers for the study of Judaism and Israel in the country. The most active center is at Nanjing University and it enjoys funding by Jewish organizations in North America. In 1993 the center's director, Xu Xin, published a Chinese translation of the Encyclopedia Judaica, a project in which 40 researchers took part. According to Xin, about 2,000 students at the university take a course on Jewish subjects every year. Three universities in China (Shanghai, Nanjing and Kaifeng) grant degrees in Jewish history and culture. A fourth, in Jinan, grants a degree in Jewish philosophy. Wald estimates that about 200 researchers are engaged in Jewish subjects on a partial basis and that between 15 and 20 deal with Jewish subjects full-time.

In the realm of Jewish culture, books on Jewish subjects that have been translated into Chinese have succeeded in making inroads among the broad public. Unlike the Europeans, the Chinese are less interested in contemporary Israeli authors such as Amos Oz and David Grossman, and more in historical and religious literature. "Books that describe Jewish antiquity generate special interest," Wald says. "The first edition of the book, `Jerusalem, 3,000 Years of History,' was published in a printing of 5,000 copies in the middle of 2003 and sold out within a short time." Prof. Plaks notes the demand for canonical Jewish books. "Books such as the translations into Chinese of Pirkei Avot [Ethics of the Fathers] and the Mishnah [teachings of the early sages] are a considerable commercial success and sell thousands of copies each."