Shalom, Beijing: Israel, China celebrate 20 years of friendship. Will this relationship break over Tehran?
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Israel and China just celebrated 20 years of friendship. But will this new special relationship come to the breaking point over Tehran?
It’s no secret that Israeli-American relations are under strain. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Barack Obama’s Oval Office last week may not have been as tense as last year’s, but the two leaders’ uneasy body language and discordant messaging have made it clear their relations remain, at best, professional.
But while Israel’s relationship with its longtime squeeze may have turned chilly, the Jewish state has discovered an unlikely candidate with which to forge a new special relationship: China.
Netanyahu may have needed a few takes to nail down his Mandarin delivery, but there he was, in late January, wishing the Chinese people a happy Year of the Dragon. “We are two ancient peoples whose values and traditions have left an indelible mark on humanity,” he gushed. “But we are also two peoples embracing modernity, two dynamic civilizations transforming the world.”
The message was promptly mirrored on the other side. “As two ancient civilizations, we have a great deal in common. Both of us enjoy profound histories and splendid cultures,” Gao Yanping, China’s ambassador to Israel, told an Israeli newspaper a few days later.
Gao was even more poetic on the Chinese Embassy’s website. “Our relations are shining with new luster in the new era,” she wrote. “It is my firm belief that, through our joint efforts, Sino-Israeli relations will enjoy wider and greater prospects!”
As they mark 20 years of diplomatic relations, China and Israel are exchanging far more than florid praise. Bilateral trade stands at almost $10 billion, a 200-fold rise in two decades. China is Israel’s third-largest export market, buying everything from telecommunications and information technology to agricultural hardware, solar energy equipment, and pharmaceuticals.
At least 1,000 Israeli firms now operate in China, home to a massive $10 billion kosher food industry that sends much of its output to Israel. Last September, the Israeli governmentannounced Chinese participation in a rail project that would allow overland cargo transport through Israel’s Negev desert, bypassing the Suez Canal. Two months later, the Chinese vice minister of commerce announced the two countries were mulling a free trade agreement.