Israeli Pressure Groups in China
| Israeli Pressure Groups in China | |
|---|---|
| Author | Walid Abd al-Hay |
| Publisher | Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations |
| Date | October 2026 |
| Type | Academic paper |
| Pages | 14 |
| Subject | Israeli and Zionist organisations in China |
Israeli Pressure Groups in China is an October 2026 paper by Walid Abd al-Hay, published by the Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations in Beirut. Abd al-Hay is a former professor of political science at Yarmouk University. The centre states that the views are the author’s. The paper defines “pressure groups” as Israeli, Jewish and Zionist organisations that try to move Chinese policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It lists four channels, concentrates on SIGNAL Group, and treats the period after 7 October 2023 as a break.[1]
Definition
The introduction distinguishes an interest group, a pressure group and a lobby, and then collapses them. A pressure group, in the paper’s use, does not seek office. It seeks channels to officials, elites and “Chinese society”, and it produces policy notes for decision-makers. The term is applied to any body the author classes as Israeli, Jewish or Zionist and as aimed at Chinese policy. Congregations are not in the list.[1]
Historical frame
The paper dates the political link to a 1920 letter from Sun Yat-sen to N. E. B. Ezra, the Baghdad-born publisher and founder of the Shanghai Zionist Association. Sun called Zionism one of the great movements of the time and said lovers of democracy should support the restoration of the Jewish nation. Abd al-Hay calls this view inaccurate, and says it lasted into the early People’s Republic: Mao Zedong treated Jews as having historical rights in Palestine and Zionism as a national liberation movement. Israel recognised the PRC in 1950. The turn, on this account, is the Bandung Conference of 1955 and Mao’s meeting with Gamal Abdel Nasser, after which China placed Israel in the Western colonial system. Diplomatic relations in 1992 reopened the field for lobbying. The paper dates Israel’s establishment to 1947.[1]
On population it follows an Anadolu Agency analysis: about 40,000 Jews migrated to China between 1845 and 1950, about 18,000 European Jews after the war, and about 2,500 left today, mostly in Beijing and Shanghai, in a population given as 1.412 billion. The 2,500 figure is the paper’s, and it is lower than the counts used by the houses.[1]
The groups
SIGNAL Group
The longest section. Sino-Israel Global Network and Academic Leadership, founded in 2011 and based in Israel, is described as having run more than a thousand forums, 60 to 70 a year, with support from US Jewish organisations and the Israeli government. The paper quotes the group’s own account: strategic dialogues, lectures by Israeli experts and “Chinese experts sympathetic to Israel”, a Global Israel Initiative aimed at Israel as a middle power, and hundreds of briefings with Chinese diplomats and scholars. Since 2011 it has trained Chinese lecturers on a semester in Israel. More than 75 of them, the paper says, teach thousands of students. The paper’s own later line is more than 2,000 students a year on Israel-studies courses, at universities from Chongqing to Beijing and Shanghai, where none had existed. In 2023 it launched the Goodman Fellowship for mid-level Israeli civil servants, with study tours to Beijing. The annual conference series began in 2016 and took in the Indo-Pacific in 2023. The ninth, in May 2025, was titled “China, Israel, and the Post-October 7 Middle East”.[1]
The claimed results are three. China has not punished Israel for criticism of Xinjiang, or for official visits with Taiwan, and the paper says this “cannot be separated, without overstating the case,” from SIGNAL. Israel-studies programmes now exist. The conferences have moved from celebrating bilateral growth to weighing China’s ties with Iran and Russia. The causal claim is flagged by the author as not to be overstated.[1]
Universities and philosemitism
A second channel is Chinese scholarship that the paper, citing Mary Ainslie, calls philosemitism: Jewish intelligence, business leadership, Israeli technology, a small state as a model of power, detached from the conflict. Institutions named:
- Nanjing University Institute for Jewish and Israel Studies, founded 1992 by Xu Xin, who visited Israel in 1988. The Israeli consulate in Shanghai gave him a prize in 2023.
- Yiyi Chen, Hebrew and Jewish studies, whose students’ papers reach the Chinese government.
- Fu Youde at Shandong University, Confucian-Jewish comparison, Maimonides in Chinese, and a joint institute with Tel Aviv University.
- Hu Hao at Henan University, deputy director of its Centre for Israel Studies, a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- Huang Renwei, on SIGNAL’s advisory council, formerly of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
- Sun Degang of Fudan University, arguing for technological ties.
- Zhou Xiaozheng of Renmin University, author of “Israel Is Definitely a Good Country”, later discussed by Alice Xin Liu.
Campus deals cited from a 2020 Anadolu piece: Tel Aviv University and Tsinghua University in 2014, the Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology in 2015, Ben-Gurion University and Jilin University in 2016, Haifa University and East China Normal University. Also 100 postdoctoral fellowships a year, 350 undergraduate scholarships for Chinese and Indian students, about 1,000 Chinese students in Israel in 2017, and about 123,000 Chinese tourists to Israel that year. Direct flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu.[1]
StandWithUs
An American advocacy group, trying for a China branch since 2009. Michael Dickson is quoted calling China a country in which the group could make a difference. Ayala Sherman-Oren, SWU-Asia director, is quoted on social media, campus programmes and networking aimed at “the next generation of the Chinese leadership”, against what the group calls misinformation and “Islamic anti-Israel propaganda”.[1]
Others
The Israel-Asia Center, working across Asia with a China focus, and the American Jewish Committee, described as seeking to raise Israel’s standing on Chinese campuses. Both are referred to a 2015 Diplomat article by Mohammed Al-Sudairi rather than documented in the paper.[1]
After 7 October 2023
Beijing’s refusal to condemn the Palestinian resistance is treated as a shock to these bodies, above all SIGNAL. The group called the war the first Middle East war of great-power competition, and argued that Chinese neutrality would complicate academic cooperation. Its recommended shift is away from Beijing and toward the Indo-Pacific, India in particular. Dale Aluf, SIGNAL research director from 2017 to 2024, criticised China’s refusal to list Hamas as a terrorist organisation, then noted an October 2024 foreign-ministry line that Palestinian national rights should be realised and Israel’s “reasonable security concerns” taken seriously. He read that as pragmatism: energy, regional stability, a larger US presence, and China’s interests in Israel. Informal dialogues continued after the official cooling.[1]
Conclusion
The finding, as the paper states it, is that civil-society bodies can complement diplomacy in a neutral or distant state. The close is a recommendation, not a description. Arab and Palestinian diplomacy should map the Chinese party elite into a sympathetic camp and a pro-Israel camp. Uyghur Muslims, put at 12 million, are proposed as a bridge, with the caveat of not interfering in China’s internal affairs. Erkin Tuniyaz is named. Public-opinion surveys and social-media studies are said to show support for Palestine and Hamas, nationalist parallels with the war against Japan, little sympathy for Israeli casualties, and antisemitic comment. The paper’s last line is that this environment should be held by permanent institutions aligned with the Palestinian resistance.[1]
What the paper does not do
It does not survey the congregations. Chabad-Lubavitch in China, Kehillat Beijing, Ohel Leah Synagogue and the Hong Kong centre are absent. The 2,500 figure is not reconciled with house estimates. The SIGNAL outcome on Xinjiang is asserted and then qualified. StandWithUs, the Israel-Asia Center and the American Jewish Committee are sketched from secondary pieces. The Uyghur recommendation is policy, and it sits outside the organisational account.
See also
- Jewish communal and Zionist organisations in China
- SIGNAL Group
- StandWithUs
- Chabad-Lubavitch in China
- Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations