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ABSTRACT
Having emerged from the context of enemy studies in the 1960s and 1970s, Israel studies in China is developing rapidly within the framework of area studies owing to the impetus of the Belt and Road Initiative, which was launched in 2013. By addressing the beginnings of Israel studies in China, the perceptions of Israel that have exerted significant impacts on Israel studies in China, and the challenges for future growth that Israel studies scholars in China are facing, this essay tries to delineate some of the basic patterns, trends, assumptions, and working hypotheses which have shaped the contour of Chinese Israel studies and which continue to reverberate.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Professors Derek J. Penslar and Johannes Becke for inviting me to present the first draft of the paper at their conference on Israel studies as a global discipline at the University of Oxford in 2017. Thanks also go to Dr. Shalom S. Wald and an anonymous reviewer of the journal who gave valuable feedback on an earlier draft. All remaining errors are mine.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. These statistics, with emendations by this author, are based on Zhang, Yiselie fazhan baogao, 2015–2020. This foremost ongoing annual report, made up of a collection of papers, contains a bibliographical survey of Israel studies in China from 2016 onward, but it does not distinguish Israel studies from Jewish studies. The statistics given here are exclusively those relating to Israel studies.
2. These universities are: Beijing Foreign Studies University*, Beijing International Studies University*, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies*, Henan University, Nanjing University, Northwest University, Peking University*, PLA Information Engineering University*, Shaanxi Normal University, Shandong University, Shanghai International Studies University*, Sichuan International Studies University*, Tsinghua University, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, University of International Business and Economics, Yunnan University, Zhengzhou University. Those with asterisk award undergraduate degree in modern Hebrew. Apart from the courses in modern Hebrew and Israel studies, Israel also features in courses in the Middle East or “West Asia and Africa” (xiya feizhou) or Jewish studies to varying degrees in these or many other universities in China.
3. This tendency is apparent, inter alia, in a survey article and in a magisterial tome by two distinguished Jewish studies scholars in China: Xu, “Israel in Chinese Scholarship”; Pan, Youtai yanjiu zai zhongguo, which also contains a comprehensive bibliography (319–67) that places the books and articles on Israel studies published between 1978 and 2007 under the rubric of “Jewish studies.” For Chinese Jewish studies, see Song, “Reflections on Chinese Jewish Studies.”
4. Zhao, “Guanyu jiaqiang waiguo wenti yanjiu de yidian shiliao,” 142–3. This article includes the full text of Mao’s reply dated December 30, 1963.
5. She, “The Cold War and Chinese Policy,” 125–74. See also this still indispensable study: Shichor, The Middle East in China’s Foreign Policy, passim.
6. Shichor, The Middle East in China’s Foreign Policy, 60, 67.
7. Yi fan nuo fu and Xie ni si, Yiselie de jushi he zhengce, and A. Lie ao ni duo fu, Yiselie zhengzhi muhou (originally published in the USSR in 1958 and 1959 respectively). A collection of 118 translated documents (1897–1959) regarding Palestinian issues was also published around the same time. See Guoji guanxi yanjiusuo, Balesitan wenti cankao ziliao.
8. Shichor, The Middle East in China’s Foreign Policy, 58.
9. Safran, Yiselie de lishi he gaikuang (originally published by Harvard University Press in 1963).
10. Safran, Yiselie de lishi he gaikuang, 33.
11. Ibid., “Chuban shuoming” [Publisher’s Statement], 2.
12. Cattan, Balesitan, alabo ren he yiselie, “Chuban shuoming” [Publisher’s Statement], 2–3. The same critique of the Soviet Union is expressed in Mohamed Heikal’s book on the Yom Kippur War (translated from Arabic). See Heikal, Zhaiyue zhanzheng, “Chuban shuoming,” 2. Heikal, an Egyptian journalist, visited China in 1973 and published a series of articles which infuriated the Soviets who accused him of having written lies about Moscow’s Middle Eastern and Afro-Asian policy, see Shichor, The Middle East in China’s Foreign Policy, 168. In 1975, the same press published another translated (from German) book on the Yom Kippur War by Gerhard Konzelmann, Di si ci zhongdong zhanzheng. These books published in the 1970s were all labeled as “neibu duwu/faxing” [Inner Reading/Circulation], which means that their circulation was limited to the privileged, but their large print runs – the first printing of Safran’s book was 33, 000 copies, a number that later Chinese publications on Israel can hardly surpass – makes them still easily available through the secondhand market, not to mention university libraries.
13. Shichor, The Middle East in China’s Foreign Policy, 114, 139; and She, “The Changing Image,” 132–8.
14. For example, Zhang, Yiselie guofangjun gedou jishu quanjie.
15. See, for example, Yaari, “China’s Middle East Policy.”
16. “Xi Jinping: Balesitan wenti shi zhongdong wenti de hexin” [Xi Jinping: Palestine Question Is the Core Issue in the Middle East], May 8, 2013, https://china.caixin.com/2013-05-08/100525131.html Accessed September 6, 2022. For its roots in the Cold War, see Shichor, The Middle East in China’s Foreign Policy, 117–9.
17. Pan, “Qiantan ben shiji shangbanye yingguo de balesitan zhengce,” 58–62, in which Safran was cited. This argument was eventually elaborated into the first comprehensive work on the Zionist movement written by Chinese scholars. See Pan et al., Youtai minzu fuxing zhi lu.
18. Du, Zhongguo he yiselie guanxi shi, 139. Originally a PhD dissertation titled China and Israel: Five Decades of Relations (Brandeis University, 1998), it remains the most detailed study on this topic.
19. See this set of standard modern Hebrew textbooks in China: Xu et al., Xibolaiyu jiaocheng. Tailored to Chinese students, it is based on a Hebrew textbook of the Hebrew University and authorized by the Academon Press.
20. Xu, Xibolaiyu yufa. The manuscript was finished more than 20 years before its final publication. See also She, “The Cold War and Chinese Policy,” 159.
21. Xu, and Yu, Di san shengdian, 154.
22. For example, Lei, and Huang, Yiselie; and Chen, Yiselie.
23. Zhang, Yiselie shi, “Qianyan” [Preface], 2.
24. Eban, Youtai shi.
25. For a discussion of Chinese perceptions of Zionism before the Communist rule, see Zhou, Chinese Perceptions of the “Jews” and Judaism, 56–57, 111–39.
26. See Pang, Yu, and Wang’s monograph, cited in endnote 17.
27. See Kotzin and Rekhess, “The State of Israel Studies,” 334; and Becke, “Land and Redemption,” 3.
28. Zhang, “Studies on the Confucianisation.” See also the critical commentary of this view by Shalom Salomon Wald in the same issue of the journal on pages 315–29.
29. See, for example, Liu, Shijie wenming yuandian xuandu. This collection of “the Classics of Jewish Civilization” consists entirely of texts from the Old Testament. The author is a pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan.
30. Pappe, Xiandai balesitan shi, “Yizhe xu” [Translator’s Preface], xiv.
31. Sand, Xugou de youtai minzu.
32. Cao, “Sui shi youtairen?” 257.
33. In general, see Min, Yiselie gonggong waijiao yu ruanshili jianshe.
34. Ying, “Ruanshili zhicheng yiselie 60 nian,” 13–15.
35. Wang, “Israel – China Relations,” 291–3.
36. Du, Zhongguo he yiselie guanxi shi, 114–28, 136–9; Ou and Tang, Cong yelusalen dao Beijing, 10–36; and Shichor, Proxy.
37. Senor and Singer, Chuangye de guodu.
38. Min, Yiselie gonggong waijiao yu ruanshili jianshe, 106.
39. The wording is a second-best choice as Israel is not granted the status of China’s “Strategic Partnership” (Zhanlue huoban guanxi), which Egypt and Iran do enjoy.
40. On the reception of Israeli writers in China, see Qi et al., Zhongwai wenxue jiaoliu shi, 169–205; and Zhong, “The Reception of Contemporary Israeli Literature.”
41. Ma, “Zhongguo meiti zhong de shatealabo xingxiang,” 34–36.
42. SIGNAL – Sino-Israel Global Network and Academic Leadership, https://sino-israel.org; see also Al-Sudairi, “An Israeli Lobby in China?”
43. Ainslie, “Chinese Philosemitism and Historical Statecraft”; and Min, Yiselie gonggong waijiao yu ruanshili jianshe, 103–11. For the anti-Israel discourses, see Gering, “Antisemitism with Chinese Characteristics.” It should be noted that new (and complete) Chinese translations of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were published in Singapore respectively in 2016 and 2018.
44. Gordis, Yiselie.
45. Personal communication with the publisher on December 15, 2023.
46. Xiao, “The ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ and China – Israel Relations”; and Evron, “The Challenge of Implementing the Belt and Road Initiative”
47. Zhonggong zhongyang bangongting, guowuyuan bangongting yinfa Guanyu jiaqiang zhongguo tese xinxing zhiku jianshe de yijian [The General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council Issued “the Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of New-type Think Tanks with Chinese Characteristics”], January 20, 2015, http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2015–01/20/content_2807126.htm; Jiaoyubu guanyu yinfa “guobie he quyu yanjiu jidi peiyu he jianshe zanxing banfa” de tongzhi [Notice of the Ministry of Education on Issuing the Interim Measures for the Cultivation and Construction of Research Centers for Area Studies], January 26, 2015, http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A20/s7068/201501/t20150126_189316.html Accessed September 15, 2022.
48. Hu, “Tuidong xingcheng 21 shiji quyu yu guobie yanjiu de zhongguo fanshi.”
49. To get a taste of some of the new trends, see, inter alia, Wang, “Yidaiyilu” guobie yanjiu baogao.
50. Yang, Yiselie.
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Song Lihong
Song Lihong is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Glazer Institute of Jewish and Israel Studies at Nanjing University, China. His recent English publications include two co-edited volumes: with Kathryn Hellerstein, China and Ashkenazic Jewry: Transcultural Encounters (De Gruyter, 2022) and, with James Ross, The Image of Jews in Contemporary China (Academic Studies Press, 2016).