Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - China's predictable response on Israel vs Hamas war: Beijing is busy exploiting opportunities for itself.

Beijing’s stance on the war is unsurprising - given its broader strategic interests.

• Beijing’s response to Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel was underwhelming to say the least.

• There was no condemnation of Hamas - and for this, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever.

• Terrorism against peaceful civilians is terrorism - no matter what country is the victim.

• The West had long argued that China is oppressing Uyghurs, and many Uyghurs are rightly enraged with the injustice of forced sterilization and labor camps (modern day slavery) that they have to endure.

• But even with all that justifiable rage, it is simply inconceivable that any Western countries would fail to condemn Uyghur attacks against defenseless Chinese civilians.

• It is simply impossible to imagine that if a bunch of Uyghur militia members walked into cities and proceeded to shoot and murder random civilians, and killed hundreds of Chinese citizens in the act, that the US (or any other G7/EU nation) would not condemn the terrorists.

• And this is Uyghurs that we are talking about - perhaps the most mistreated and oppressed group of people currently on earth.

• Palestinians in Gaza live in very tough conditions, but plenty of locations on earth are impoverished and are doing very badly: it is not like an average Egyptian citizen next door is living in a wealthy country (but Arab citizens of Israel do).

• A lot of unfortunate conditions faced by Palestinians are due to their own fault: failure to agree to a two-state solution when it was possible is just one example.

• But none of this is to associate ordinary Palestinians with Hamas - it is simply an illustrative point that terrorism is terrorism even if the party conducting it was to originate from the most unjust environment - and that is not Palestine.

• Hamas is a terrorist organization with the goal of destruction of Israel written into its own charter.

• It is also an organization that has not held free and fair elections since coming to power in 2006.

• Just like ordinary Germans could not have been held guilty for failure to remove Hitler once he came to power and became a dictator (and we therefore did not punish Germans after the war was over), here too, we cannot simply wave our hands and say ‘‘well it is their fault for enabling Hamas”.

• Surely, if Hamas was so confident in its popularity, it would have held elections?

• Even authoritarian regimes like that of Russia and Iran hold elections - precisely because they are confident that they will secure at least a significant minority of votes - where extra ‘‘top-up’’ electoral fraud via administrative resources of the state would not be too outrageous of a spectacle to pull off.

• But Hamas is not doing even that - it probably understands that it would lose such a contest.

• All of this is to say that 1) Terrorism against defenseless civilians is inexcusable whatever the source and precise circumstances, and 2) It should not be that hard to condemn Hamas without condemning ordinary Palestinians - in fact, this is precisely what the leader of every Western nation is doing at this very moment.

• But this was not all - what started as a failure to condemn Hamas, evolved quickly into taking clear sides in the conflict.

• On Saturday, Chinese foreign minister Wang went further, and told his counterpart, the Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan that “Israel’s actions have gone beyond the scope of self-defence” and that it should listen “to the calls of the international community and the United Nations secretary-general to stop collective punishment of the people of Gaza.”

• Later on, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi called his Iranian counterpart and expressed China’s support for Muslim countries to strengthen coordination over Palestinian issues, and deliver a united voice. 

• Wang said that the right of Palestinians to establish a nation has “long been laid aside” and that “This type of unfairness in the history should be ended as soon as possible,” he also added that China continued “to stand by peace and fairness, and supports Palestinians to safeguard the just course of their own people.” 

• It is clearly tone-deaf to talk about a two-state solution so soon after the October 7 attack, and in the middle of this war.

• But leaving that aside, what explains China’s decision to side pretty definitively with Iran and Co in this conflict?

• It all comes down to a) China’s grand strategy and, b) brute cost-benefit analysis involved:

• 1) Direct interests involved: more benefit from alignment with Arabs and Iran.

• China must have known that relations with Israel would sour significantly - and sour they did.

• On Thursday, Israel’s foreign ministry told China’s envoy to the Middle East, Zhai Jun, that Beijing’s official reaction to Hamas’s attack was not appropriate and did not acknowledge the national right to self-defence.

• And that was before the weekend statements.

• So why was China ok with this backlash from Israel?

• First and foremost: a simple cost-benefit analysis.

• Yes, it is true that China and Israel have had a good run as of late.

• The tech-related cooperation is particularly notable, and China is importing more than $1 billion worth of semiconductors a year from Israel.

• But:

• 1. China understands that this cooperation can always be ‘‘cancelled’’ at a very short notice if there is enough nudge from the US: Washington is Israel’s lifeline and primary ally, and when push comes to shove, Israel will always pick America over China.

• (side note: and even without security guarantees from Washington, just the sheer size of US economic interests in Israel would already suffice in moving the needle: America’s direct investment in Israel overshadows China’s in the entire Middle East..)

• So the economic and technological cooperation is conditional.