Opium wars and Shylock: Despite official ‘welcome’ to Yellen, what her visit reveals about anti-Semitism in China

However, a section of China’s intelligentsia has been highly alarmed by this “friendly” attitude shown to Yellen. Comprising professors, researchers, and social media “influencers,” this group has termed the “uninvited” Yellen’s visit as “wasted”, much like they had done for the US secretary of state Anthony Blinken earlier in June. Importantly, in Yellen’s case, they have gone a step ahead — the attack on her is around her identity as the “old Jewish lady.”

In a signed blog, Li Rongmao, a current affairs commentator, wrote: “Many say following the Yellen visit, Sino-US relations are about to ease. But Yellen is a Jew, she just does not represent the US interests, but also the interests of Wall Street” (163.com, July 10).

Prejudice and paranoia

Two factors may well explain why Yellen was chosen for the anti-Semitic “attack” in China: prejudice and paranoia.

Prejudice because there is a widespread belief among the Chinese intelligentsia that given their “money-lending” and “market manipulator” attributes, what Jews require is an environment conducive to borrowing, which includes things like financial crisis, pandemics, and preferably war, everything China is at present surrounded by.

And paranoia because most Chinese, including the CCP, accuse the Jews of starting China’s “century of humiliation” by financing the Opium Wars.

Anti-Semitism in China

China officially denies the existence of anti-Semitism in the country. China is under one-party rule, where speech is heavily regulated and self-censored, and the party-line is supposed to be the country’s line. Historically speaking, it is indeed true that unlike Christian and Muslim societies, China does not have a centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism deeply intertwined with ancient religious anxieties.

However, as some Jewish scholars recently observed, “That hasn’t stopped European-style anti-Semitism, often framed in Communist terms, from taking hold in the People’s Republic” (Mosaic Magazine, July 2023).

Could it be the case that because Judaism is not among China’s five recognised religions — Catholicism, Protestantism, Taoism, Islam, and Buddhism — the CCP does not much care if some sections within the Chinese society harbour anti-Jewish attitudes?

In fact, there is a longer history to anti-Semitism with Chinese characteristics, going as far back as to the nineteenth century Jewish “drug lords” who were blamed for bringing upon Imperial China the Opium Wars, which were not only utterly humiliating but left the Chinese people drugged, backward, and exploited.

The terms in which Yellen has been attacked seem to be lifted directly off the caricaturish view of William Shakespeare’s Shylock. It is important to know that every school-going Chinese is familiar with the idiom ‘ge rou huan zhai‘, meaning “cutting off flesh to repay a debt.” They learnt it in their ninth grade textbook Weinisi shang ren (The Merchant of Venice), as part of the Chinese language syllabus. Enid Tsui, the art critic for a Hong Kong daily, wrote some years ago (SCMP, July 2016): “Reading of Weinisi shang ren teaches them about themes such as friendship, anti-Semitism, and conflicts arising from the worst in capitalist society.” Yellen has been called a “shrewd money-lender” and a “market manipulator”.

Past and present

Tuvia Gering, a Jerusalem-based Jewish researcher who specialises in China’s security and foreign policy, said the vitriol against Yellen is as much a product of history as the “new wave” of anti-Semitism in China.

Citing Lu Kewen, a self-styled young Chinese online “influencer” and social media celebrity, Gering wrote recently: “A new generation of Chinese cyber nationalists are freely making a career out of poisoning the minds of China’s billion-plus active internet users with paranoid click bait, including about ‘the Jews’. (Tablet, February 2022)

Thus, regardless of Beijing officially denying anti-Semitism, the embassy of Israel in Beijing, global media, and scholars internationally continue to accuse China of perpetuating it. A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a story, “Is China anti-Semitic? One Jew’s Reflections.” (WSJ, 2014) Recently, the government of Israel angrily protested against what it described as “blatant anti-Semitism” on a programme run by China’s state broadcaster, CCTV (Associated Press, May 2021).

This March, a Jewish online journal ran a full-length study on how the belief that “Jews are China’s Number-one Enemy” is being proactively propagated in China. (Mosaic, March 2023)

Reacting to Yellen’s “infamous” speech three months ago, in which she aggressively advocated that US firms lessen dependence on China, Meng Yan, a former deputy director of a think tank under China’s Ministry of National Defense, said, “Yellen has a clear 3-point agenda: China must continue to purchase US bonds, must reduce its high-tech investments, and must allow US companies and investments to freely enter China.” (kunlunce.com, July 4). A Chinese commentator scornfully responded: “This is what the political elite of the US Empire demands of China. And the old Jewish grandma has come to Beijing not to negotiate but to dictate.”

Hemant Adlakha is a professor of Chinese at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He is also Vice-Chairperson and Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), Delhi.