For the Zionist State, China is a Leading Partner in Trade
by Barry Weisleder
China is #3 in bi-lateral trade with Israel. In terms of import sources of the Zionist state in 2023, China is #1 with a share of 17.7% (14a.7 billion USD). That puts the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) far ahead of the USA, Germany and Turkey in trade with the Zionist Apartheid state. This is according to the World Bank, which has no material interest in lying about this matter.
Since July 2005, unions and civil society organizations in Occupied Palestine, and around the world, have demanded that Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions be applied against Israel. Since October 2023 the world is witnessing an escalated, ongoing genocide by the Zionist colonial-settler state directed at the Palestinian people, over 45,000 of whom have been killed by IDF bombardment and on-the-ground massacres in Gaza and the West Bank. Over the past two months, thousands of students have erected pro-Palestinian encampments on their campuses to demand disclosure and divestment by academic institutions. Tens of thousands of employees at UCLA are engaged in rotating strikes to press for BDS action.
Combined with anti-genocide mass protests on a daily basis all around the world, the sheer massive extent of these labour union and grassroots popular actions against the Apartheid state and its imperialist backers is simply unprecedented.
And so is China’s flagrant violation of international solidarity, although it revives memories of China’s disgraceful war against embattled Vietnam in 1979. It seems that the Stalinist rulers of the Chinese Communist Party who sit atop the deformed workers’ state of the PRC will do almost anything to penetrate the lucrative market at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.
What does China trade with Israel? As of January 22, 2024, according to the publication China Briefing, the main PRC imports to Israel are: machinery, electronic equipment, textiles, electric cars, chemicals, rubber and plastics. What does China get in trade from Israel? Diamonds, integrated circuits, refined petroleum, medical instruments, aircraft, spacecraft and potassic fertilizers.
Keep in mind that the Zionist state is the ninth largest arms exporter in the world and has the highest number of billionaires in the Middle East. China has 814 billionaires, the most in the world, according to the Hurun Global Rich List in 2024. The USA has 800.
Marking the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Yale research scholar Yangyang Cheng wrote in The Nation: “Chinese officials see Israeli counter-insurgency measures against Palestinians as a model for the security regime in Xinjiang… and Chinese drones and facial-recognition cameras have been used by Israeli authorities to control the Palestinian population.”
Turkiye, an important regional power, also has strong commercial relations with the PRC. It exports to China vegetable fats and oils, grains, flour, seafood and dairy products. The main products that China exported to Turkiye are: broadcasting equipment, computers, and semi-conductor devices. Over the past five years the exports of China to Turkiye increased at an annualized rate of 109 per cent, from $552 million in 2017 to $22.2 billion in 2022. What impact, do you suppose, this trade has on the capacity of the authoritarian regime of President Recep Erdogan to oppress its national minorities, including the Kurdish people?
It seems that the fate of the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples, or the destiny of any oppressed nation, is not a high priority for the ruling caste in China. Where is the Belt and Road to freedom from Great Han chauvinism and CCP collaboration with the capitalist rulers of the BRICS? Is the CCP secretly building a new Communist International that is committed to workers’ democracy and to lead revolutions to overthrow capitalist and bureaucratic rule everywhere? If so, Socialist Action would gladly apply to join.
Instead, the world is witness to how the tiny but brave armed forces of the Houthis of South Yemen take it upon themselves to interfere with commercial shipping destined for Israel at the entrance to the Red Sea. Do the Houthis give ships from the PRC a free pass to the Suez Canal? Perhaps. They can hardly be blamed for not fighting the whole world of traitors and opportunists. But China with 1.4 billion people, many times the dimensions of South Yemen (33 million), has no such excuse. Still, the ruling caste of the PRC pushes the discredited Two-State Solution, which would maintain Palestine as a Bantustan in the shadow of the Zionist nuclear arms fortified bastion forever. Meanwhile, China trades voluminously with the genocidal enemies of the Palestinian people.
Is this what “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” looks like? No thanks. Finally, is this the best way to enlist global working class solidarity with China against punitive American trade tariffs and belligerent war maneuvers by Washington in the South China Sea? Again, no. Workers’ democracy and anti-oppression action will attract the great abundance of international solidarity needed to put an end to imperialist rule.