[Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The Communist Chinese dictatorship refused to condemn Hamas’ invasion of Israel and the terrorists’ savage massacre of approximately 1200 Israelis on October 7th, including babies, children, women, and the elderly. Instead, it denounced Israel’s military counter-offensive against the genocidal monsters and has repeatedly conducted a ceasefire that would keep Hamas intact to conduct further brutal attacks against Israeli civilians.
Palestinian acts of violence fit the Chinese regime’s paradigm of so-called “people’s resistance” against Western imperialism and oppression. Thus, it treats Islamist terrorists like Hamas with kids’ gloves. And the regime’s leaders herald their solidarity with the Palestinian terrorists’ state sponsor, Iran.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, for example, had a phone call with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian eight days after Hamas’ slaughters and abductions. During the call, Mr. Wang Yi offered the same justification for Hamas’ brutality on October 7th as Hamas’ ardent supporters have done in their protests around the world. According to China’s own official government readout of the call, China’s Foreign Minister “emphasized that the fundamental reason for the development of the Palestine-Israel situation today is that the Palestinian people’s right to statehood has been put on hold for a long time, their right to survival has not been implemented for a long time, and their right to return has been ignored for a long time.”
However, when the Chinese regime perceives a serious challenge to its own authority from dissident groups such as the Uyghur Muslims, the regime’s official line is to treat them all as if they were dangerous extremists. Uyghurs have been severely punished for resisting the government’s actions to forcibly wean them away from their religion and culture.
For example, after Uyghur Muslims were accused in 2014 of killing about 29 people and injuring over 130, China’s President Xi Jinping did not hesitate to label the Xinjiang region where the Uyghurs live as China’s “frontline against terrorism.” Xi called for an all-out “struggle against terrorism” and to show “absolutely no mercy.”
The state-controlled Global Times ran an article entitled “Nothing justifies civilian slaughter in China’s ‘9-11.’” The article declared that “A nationwide outrage has been stirred. Justice needs to be done and terrorists should be punished with iron fists.” The regime’s mouthpiece added that “Anyone attempting to harbor and provide sympathies for the terrorists, calling them the repressed or the weak, is encouraging such attacks and helping committing a crime.”
Hamas slaughtered at least 1200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, in one day, which has been described as Israel’s 9/11. This would be equivalent to killing nearly 40,000 Americans based on the comparative populations – about 13 times the number of people that al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks killed on 9/11. Yet when Israel undertook its counter-offensive, showing no mercy for the terrorists, President Xi called for an immediate ceasefire, which would allow the terrorists to regroup and rearm for more October 7-like attacks that Hamas’ leadership has threatened.
Aside from evincing the surging anti-Semitism in China that we are seeing worldwide, the Chinese regime’s pro-Hamas stance can be explained in terms of its geopolitical, economic, and domestic objectives.
China has a close alliance with Iran, as well as with Russia and North Korea, which reflects these authoritarian governments’ shared opposition to what they perceive as Western powers’ imperialistic control of the rules-based world order. As part of its strategic challenge to the United States’ number one superpower status, China has been steadily expanding its footprint in the Middle East.
China has pointed to its role in brokering the normalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran as proof that China can be a more effective peacemaker in the region than the United States. “China’s success in brokering Saudi Arabia-Iran talks may serve as an exemplary role in solving Palestine-Israel conflicts,” boasted a reporter for the Global Times a day after Hamas’ attack.
China is Iran’s number one customer for oil. At the same time, China is Iran’s major supplier of military technology, small arms, tactical ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles. Iran uses oil revenues from its sales to China, facilitated by the Biden administration’s lax enforcement of sanctions against Iran, to finance Hamas and Iran’s other terrorist proxies.
It is true that China has also maintained a lucrative trading relationship with Israel. However, China’s dependency on Iran for a discounted supply of oil and its attempt to supersede the U.S.’s influence in the Middle East has moved China into Iran’s corner and, by extension, into the corner of the terrorist proxies that Iran supports.
“China supports Iran, Iran supports Hamas, and Beijing has a hand in this as well,” Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang said in a televised interview on October 16th.
Last February, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in Beijing to further strengthen China’s relationship with the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism. “In the face of the current complex changes in the world, times, and history, China and Iran have supported each other (and) worked together in solidarity and cooperation,” President Xi said. “No matter how the international and regional situation changes, China will unswervingly develop friendly cooperation with Iran,” he added. They met again in August while in Johannesburg, South Africa to attend the BRICS summit where President Xi extended his congratulations to Iran for becoming a member of BRICS.
In between President Xi’s two meetings this year with his Iranian counterpart, President Xi welcomed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Beijing where they agreed to a strategic partnership. Xi said that he supports “the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights.”
The Chinese regime is using Israel’s conduct of its war with Hamas as a wedge issue to divide the United States and the Arab countries that back the Palestinians’ demands, including Saudi Arabia. The Chinese propaganda machine is portraying the United States’ opposition to an immediate ceasefire as proof to Arab Muslim countries, including those that the U.S. has helped to move closer to Israel, as proof that the U.S. cannot be trusted. China also sees the benefit of siding with the Sunni Arab countries in their support for the Palestinian cause as a way to dissuade them from publicly objecting to China’s repression of the Uyghur Muslims.
Staff reporters for the Global Times, the regime’s state-controlled propaganda outlet, wrote that the Israeli-Hamas conflict was “partly caused by Western colonization and exacerbated by US-biased Middle East policies.” The writers followed the party line in portraying China as impartial and willing to facilitate negotiations to resolve the conflict.
China’s notion of “impartiality” is to demand that Israel agree to a comprehensive ceasefire now, placing its civilians in danger of more deadly attacks by rejuvenated Hamas terrorists. The Chinese regime expects Israel to take the terrorists’ word that they will abide by the terms of a permanent ceasefire, even after Hamas has promised a “perpetual war” to destroy Israel and slaughter more Jews.
“China always opposes all forms of terrorism,” President Xi said in 2015. Another big lie from the Chinese Communist regime, as proven conclusively by China’s criticism of Israel’s fight for its survival against Iran’s chief Palestinian terrorist proxy, Hamas..
