Chinese and Jews, China and Israel
By andygogo
@andygogo (1579)
China
January 2, 2007 9:33pm CST
The Jews have always been scapegoated for centuries in the same way as the overseas Chinese communities in South East Asia have been made into scapegoats in the past three centuries. This was done to divert the public's ire in times of crisis in favour of the powers that be, thus any Chinese having lived in South East Asia can easily emphatise with the plight of the Jews in Europe. Note that both Jews and Chinese, albeit only a minority among them, did serve as financiers of European royalty and colonial rulers in South East Asia, these financiers and others among their kinfolk were easily expelled or simply persecuted in pogroms when the ruling elites could not deal effectively in crisis management of their respective territorial domains.
To make matters worse, both the Jews and Chinese have been wrongly blamed for the persecution they underwent. There are theories that the Holocaust was orchestrated by Jews to pave the way for the creation of the state of Israel as much as there have been recently new theories speculating that Chinese businessmen planned the May 1998 anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia to safeguard their business interest due to the Asian monetary crisis. However sound the rationalisation for such theories may be, one cannot negate the underlying prejudice and bigotry behind them. Anti-Semitism on one hand, anti-Siniticism on the other, it's no wonder that the Chinese have in recent centuries been attributed as the "Jews of the East".
Israel deserves to exist as a nation state as much as the People's Republic of China does, the good relations between the two nations are based on the similar experience based on persecution of the Jewish and Chinese people. The Jews suffered the stigma as a downtrodden people ever since the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem resulting in the Jewish Diaspora. China, once a great and glorious nation of proud people, digressed into a semi-feudal society in the hands of foreign aggressors who ravaged the motherland under the pretext of Gold, Gospel and Glory, thereby she came to be known as the "Sick Man of Asia" - a stigma which no longer exists for it is a very proud thing again to be Chinese. Now, Israel and China are two great nations that have regained their greatness based on historical legitimity in line with current reality. Thus both countries can work together to bring an end to the injustices afflicting other persecuted people of the world.
Apart from that, good Sino-Israeli relations are conducive to how China can learn more from Israel on how to protect her fellow ethnic Chinese throughout the world based on a sense of moral responsibility, in the same way as Israel can learn from China on how better govern and protect the interests of its mainly Muslim Palestinian minority. In this way, the Jews and Chinese will contribute to a more peaceful and harmonious world for all of humanity.
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