In China’s Calls for Mideast Peace, Hamas Assault Goes Unmentioned

Summary
China has called for peace and de-escalation in the region but has avoided any condemnation of the deadly assault on Israel by the Gaza-based militant group.Since the start of the recent turmoil in the Middle East, one word has been absent from China’s official statements: “Hamas."
China has called for peace and de-escalation in the region but has avoided any condemnation of the deadly assault on Israel by the Gaza-based militant group, which shocked the world on Oct. 7. China’s tiptoeing around the brutality echoes its avoidance of terms such as “invasion" to describe Russia’s military assault on Ukraine and highlights both Beijing’s longstanding Palestinian leanings and its efforts to challenge Western geopolitical narratives.
The U.S. and its allies immediately condemned the assault as evil terrorism by Hamas. Beijing, by contrast, has blamed historic factors and expressed generalized concern “over the current escalation of tensions and violence between Palestine and Israel."
Rather than scenes of carnage in Israel, China’s government-run media have spotlighted the Israeli military’s forceful response in Gaza, set against a backdrop of deepening hardships for Palestinians, often aired alongside video and photos of U.S. warships as if to suggest the reaction is American-led.
As in Ukraine, China is trying to avoid antagonizing either side, while standing apart from U.S. policy, political analysts said.
“Historically, China has aligned with the Arab League on supporting the Palestinians. In comparison, Israel is always an ally of the U.S.," said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has yet to comment publicly on the crisis.
His Mideast envoy has spoken with both Palestinian and Israeli authorities, as well as other players in the region. “Special Envoy Zhai Jun stressed during the phone calls that to end the cycle of conflict between Palestine and Israel, the key is to return to the two-state solution as the basis, restore peace talks, establish an independent State of Palestine, and realize the peaceful coexistence of Palestine and Israel," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters on Friday.
Beijing slightly toughened its initial statement on the unfolding crisis after pointed complaints from Israeli officials and visiting Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that it failed to condemn terrorism. The adjusted statement stopped short of criticizing the attack and didn’t mention Hamas.
China has sought to portray itself as a neutral party and peacemaker in hot spots such as the Middle East, and some analysts see its muted sympathy for Israel as calibrated to avoid stirring the Arab world. That is partly a mathematical play: There are nearly two dozen Arab League nations versus one Israel, equaling more votes in the United Nations and bigger market opportunities, including for Xi’s Belt and Road investments and other development and security initiatives. Plus, the Arab world supplies China with oil.
Beijing has warmed to Israel in recent years by celebrating its technology sector. But for far longer China has aligned itself with Palestinian causes including its unmet demands for a self-ruled state, which Chinese statements identify as the root cause of the latest outbreak in hostilities.
Xi hosted the president of the Palestinian authority, Mahmoud Abbas, on a state visit in June that established a strategic partnership, a term China usually reserves for countries it views as sharing common interests in global affairs. Before the recent attack, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also been expected to travel as soon as this month to meet Xi in Beijing.
China’s tone has fallen flat in Western capitals. “They are doing the same thing they did with Ukraine," said Elizabeth Wishnick, senior research scientist at Arlington, Va.-based Center for Naval Analyses. She said that such stands contrast with Beijing’s pledges to play a constructive force in global affairs.
China’s dispassionate response to what Israelis are comparing to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. is also a reminder of how government broadcaster China Central Television waited hours to show the first images of the terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists that destroyed New York’s World Trade Center and then only as a brief bulletin at the end of a regular news program. Still, unlike Xi’s silence at the attack on Israel, then Chinese leader Jiang Zemin did send U.S. President George W. Bush a telegram expressing China’s “deep sympathy and condolences" to the families of victims and stressing the Chinese government’s condemnation of terrorism.

The latest messaging reflects deep-seated Beijing policy, rather than a tin ear, analysts said. Its expression of deep concern on Saturday matched virtually word for word a Foreign Ministry statement following a smaller outbreak in Palestinian-Israeli hostilities in April, and aligned with statements from some Arab capitals.
Dispatches by China’s government-controlled media have mentioned Hamas, often in stories produced in the Middle East and typically with the group’s more formal names, including “Islamic Resistance Movement" and “Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement." But they haven’t linked the group to deaths in Israel or explored its ties to Iran, instead equivocating with action-reaction explanations: “The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Saturday launched a surprise attack on southern Israeli towns adjacent to the Gaza Strip, prompting Israel to launch retaliatory strikes on Gaza," Xinhua News Agency has said in English-language dispatches.
Noam Urbach, a China scholar in Israel, said China is proud of how during the Holocaust it granted entry to thousands of European Jews but has now shown a “great betrayal" by refusing to criticize Hamas and censoring domestic media coverage of its slaughter.
More sympathy with Israel has appeared in messages on the country’s busy social media, possibly reflecting increasing Chinese tourism to Israel. “Any language or behavior to support Hamas is extremely shameful. They are taking children, women and elderly hostage," one user commented on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform.
To China watchers, Beijing’s halting responses to Russia’s Ukraine invasion appeared to undermine its often-repeated defense of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Likewise, Beijing’s relative silence on the slaughter of Israeli families by Hamas militants, coupled with signs of concern about Israel’s response, contrast with Chinese retorts to Western criticism about the detention of numerous Muslim Uyghur people in Xinjiang: that aggressive action is necessary to eliminate terrorism.
“Counterterrorism for me, but not for thee," said Jordan Schneider, who has tracked Beijing’s messaging for his New York-based outlet, ChinaTalk Media.
Schneider said that China’s avoidance of commentary that might be sympathetic to Israel could pay short-term dividends in the Arab world but won’t help Xi’s aims to build international credibility. “If you want to be a globally respected superpower, you’ve got to be human," he said.
Beijing’s messaging so far in the Israeli crisis is also seen as complicating Xi’s effort to position China as a global peacemaker, including in Ukraine, following his government’s success this year in nudging Saudi Arabia and Iran to curb their mutual animosities.
“Despite the growing interest in the region, Beijing’s silence on the Hamas attack could yet limit its ability to broker peace there," Claus Soong, an analyst at Berlin-based think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies, said in a commentary.
U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, during a Wednesday presentation to a National Committee on U.S.-China Relations audience, called Beijing’s initial statement on the attacks “very neutral and very flat" and without an expression of sympathy for the loss of life.
“It remains to be seen if China has the ability to be a true mediator, where you have to speak the truth to both sides," he said.
—Wenxin Fan and Liyan Qi contributed to this article.