[Source: yahoo.com]

Distorted coverage of alleged removal of Hu Jintao from Communist Party Congress is par for the course along with other recent coverage.

It is common for Western media to automatically imply or label everything that happens in China as “evil.” The most recent case concerns the events surrounding former Communist Party Chairman Hu Jintao at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

C:\Users\Felix Abt\Downloads\Europea Diplomatic Magazine, Brussels.jpg
C:\Users\Felix Abt\Desktop\Rubbish\Hu Jintao 4.png
C:\Users\Felix Abt\Desktop\Rubbish\Hu Jintao 5.png
[Source: jpost.com]

“A ghostly scene at China’s top of power: Xi Jinping’s predecessor is taken away. The ‘new emperor’ is reaching for absolute power. What are the consequences for the world?” This is the title and the introduction of the newspaper Die Weltwoche to a German-language article by the British historian Francis Pike, in which he writes: “Hu’s media-fueled removal takes on the appearance of a political drama reminiscent of Chairman Mao’s brutal purges of party members in the 1950s.” He is referring to a video from the Chinese Party Congress showing former party leader Hu Jintao allegedly being “forcefully taken away.”

“The removal of Hu from the hall occurred mere minutes after foreign media were allowed into the Great Hall,” Pike adds. This immediately raises the question of why Xi Jinping should wait to “remove” Hu Jintao until Western media are on the scene, having only waited for such an opportunity to pillory the “cruel and inhumane dictator Ji Jinping”?

Hu Jintao removed from party congress
Ex-Chinese President Hu Jintao being removed from Communist Party Congress on October 22, 2022. [Source: nypost.com]

As for Xi Jingping’s dictatorship, it is worth noting in passing that last month at the Athens Democracy Forum (in collaboration with The New York Times), a scholar from the University of Zurich was asked to comment on democracy in China, and her response was not exactly what one would expect with so much Western dictatorship talk: In recent years, under Xi Jinping, there have been increased “democratic experiments, for example, to allow greater citizen participation and to make local government officials more responsive and accountable to citizens.” This is all the more remarkable because, in the so-called democratic West, the trend is in the opposite direction, namely toward a creeping dismantling of citizens’ democratic rights. And, as might be expected, the media did not report on it because, unlike Hu Jintao’s earth-shattering “removal” from the convention hall, it was apparently an insignificant detail that would also upset their China narrative.

A picture containing diagram

Description automatically generated
[Source: biz-at-it.blogspot.com]

Unwelcome details blanked out

The same media did not mention that the frail 80-year-old man, who left a somewhat bewildered impression, had been escorted to and from the convention for several days during the Party Congress and before the “forced removal” hyped by the Western media on the last day of the Congress.

Here, for example, you can see Xi Jinping taking care of him as a friendly usher.

Cutting away an important part of the message and changing perceptions with misleading text is manipulation and is—rightly!—castigated by the same media when it is done by China.

C:\Users\Felix Abt\Downloads\Untitled Design (11).jpg
“Child soldiers” in newsrooms turned into shooting galleries drop speculative bombs on China: Young German journalist Fabian Kretschmer writes from Beijing for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and various other media in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as “for the history books.” (Above translation into English by Felix Abt)

That Hu Jintao has a health problem was first noticed by China observers at the 2019 National Day parade, when he was seen on the Tiananmen Balcony in Beijing with his hands shaking badly.

Immediately prior to the incident at the Party Congress, Hu Jintao participated in the election as the second eligible voter, just after Xi Jinping, who cast his vote at the ballot box. In a society that is much more Confucianist than Communist, this symbolic placement in the vote signifies great respect for the elder statesman. The Western media also blanked this out of the overall picture. This made it easier for them to construct a coup, a purge and a humiliation of the former president.

C:\Users\Felix Abt\Desktop\Rubbish\Hu Jintao voting at party congress 2022.png
On the Chinese evening news (in the video starting at 5:21), Hu Jintao was shown casting his vote after Xi Jinping had cast his vote at the ballot box and just before Hu was “removed.” [Source: cctv.com]

If Hu had really been purged during the day, as Western media claimed, it is highly unlikely that Chinese television would have shown him in its report in the evening.

According to George Soros, Xi is the “most dangerous man in the world.”

Image
The “most dangerous man in the world” according to George Soros: Yes, Xi Jinping invaded Iraq and destroyed Libya. He has killed children in Venezuela, Palestine and Afghanistan with military weapons or the “sanctions” hunger weapon. He has supported extremists and murderers in Syria and Nicaragua. He has reduced the citizens of Iran and Cuba to misery with embargoes. He is running a genocide in Yemen. He is waging drone wars all over the world, wiping out innocent families and wedding parties.—Sorry, I mistyped that one: It’s the morally superior opponents of Xi Jinping who are supported by the speculative billionaire and do-gooder Soros! [Source: investopedia.com]

Political purge and humiliation for the history books or disruption of “worship”?

Little was heard from the official Chinese side about the incident, apart from a tweet from Xinhua News Agency saying Hu “did not feel well” during the meeting.

A report by Singaporean TV station CNA added an important detail that Western media representatives who were in the room seemed to have deliberately ignored: Hu had been looking at some documents on the table in front of him and apparently had a disagreement with the current chairman of China’s legislature, Li Zhanshu, who was sitting to his left, who took the documents out of his hand.

And when Li Zhanshu tried to get up to help Hu stand, Li was briefly dragged back to his seat by Wang Huning, a party ideologue and former professor of international politics to his left, making matters even more confusing. Xi stopped this disruption to the choreographed party meeting and summoned a staffer, who then tried to get Hu to leave, and who then escorted him out of the room. The video also shows that Hu, after standing up, first hovered in place, then took a few slow steps, then stopped and turned to Xi, who nodded briefly but continued to look at the assembled delegates.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping (bottom left), Li Zhanshu, and Wang Huning (right), look on as former leader Hu Jintao (center) speaks to Xi as he is helped to leave early from the closing session of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party at The Great Hall of People in Beijing, China, on Oct. 22, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (bottom left), Li Zhanshu, and Wang Huning (right), look on as former leader Hu Jintao (center) speaks to Xi as he is helped to leave early from the closing session of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party at The Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on October 22, 2022. [Source: theepochtimes.com]

Claimed purge makes no sense

If it had been a dispute, the incident would have been extraordinary, because in communist parties, which are not known for their transparency, disagreements are settled behind closed doors, and in any case not in front of running cameras from the whole world. So one would need to know what is in the documents. A former Chinese insider told the BBC, “Why would the party put a document on Hu’s desk if he wasn’t allowed to see it?”

Bill Bishop of the China newsletter Sinocism stated that the “purge claimed by the media doesn’t make sense that way.” Hu Haifeng, Hu Jintao’s son and party secretary of Lishui, Zhejiang, also sat in the room. “A purge of one without the other would be unlikely,” Bishop explained.

Hu Haifeng, son of Hu Jintao (CCP file photo)
Hu Heifeng [Source: taiwannews.com]

A real China insider was interviewed by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. When asked about Xi Jinping’s possible motives for the alleged “forced removal” of Hu Jintao, he replied:

“Xi is certainly not shy about taking drastic action, but his obsession is to restore party discipline through rules and procedures. He has never gone the way of Stalin or North Korea of just making his enemies disappear. Even with his bitterest foes—such as Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, and Guo Boxiong, people who, in fact, plotted a coup against him—Xi took them down, but did everything according to the procedures.

He is a stern but not an arbitrary ruler. His books and speeches have more citations from China’s Legalism school than anything else. Legalism (a bad translation) stresses the importance of rules and regulations over arbitrary power.

If anyone wants to challenge Xi, it would be incredible for them to do so on the last day of the party congress, which is mainly for formal endorsement and communication. The debate and negotiations happened behind the scene MONTHS beforehand. There were plenty of opportunities for the two to argue if they didn’t agree with each other. This was simply not the case.”

Why have some Western media platforms gone wild with speculation, including suggesting it was a purge, the interviewer asked:

“This is the problem I have with the Western media and those ‘experts.’ You can be critical of the Chinese system, and you may dislike it intensely, but you at least need to understand what you are criticizing. Their imagination of China is just a plus-size North Korea, a modern-day Stalinist state, or the new Nazis. In fact, many Western media just borrow the same analytical tools they used to analyze the Soviet Union or North Korea or even Nazi Germany and apply it to China.

This is what I call the intellectual Procrustean bed they have forced on everyone studying China. Sometimes it can get really ridiculous. It’s either laziness or dogmatic rigidity or having an agenda—or a combination of all these.

There are many problems in Xi’s system, and so far he and the party have not come up with convincing answers to them. But to imagine it simply as another Soviet Union or North Korea is missing the point. If people start to make decisions based on such skewed views and perceptions, that will lead to real-life consequences. Hong Kong is a living example of it.”

So it is okay to criticize the Chinese system harshly, and pundits and the media may deeply loathe it, but they do so while being quite clueless.

Also, contrary to the predictions and speculations of experts and media in the West in the run-up to the Party Congress, the “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” was not shortened to Xi Jinping Thought in the Constitution, nor was Xi given new descriptive titles such as “Leader/领袖.”

[Source: english.yunnan.cn]

Further background and insights censored by the Western media

There are two other key current things that pundits like John Pike and the mainstream media will not tell you:

  1. China has remained essentially Confucian for more than two thousand years. Confucius advocated a government that cares for the people and makes their welfare its primary concern. It should be a meritocracy, in that “those who govern should do so on the basis of merit and not on the basis of inherited status,” he proclaimed, and that it should be enlightened and benevolent (in which the demonstrably most capable people who best serve the people should rise to positions of leadership).

    This is in contrast to Western democracies, where even the most incompetent can come to power thanks to empty promises and/or because they were well sponsored, and then have their own interests and those of their patrons in mind rather than the interests of their constituents. In China, civil servants still have to pass exams and prove themselves if they want to keep their jobs. This corresponds to the centuries-old Confucian tradition, according to which anyone, regardless of their social background, could obtain a position in the civil service at the imperial court after passing an entrance examination in various subjects. The fact that 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty in China over the past 40 years, accounting for more than 75% of global poverty, is no accident, but part of the application of this philosophy.
  2. Mainstream media such as Foreign Affairs magazine highlighted the “Collateral Damage in China’s War on Covid,” or Nikkei, the world’s largest financial newspaper, headlined “Self-isolated: China’s lonely zero-COVID battle in spotlight” without ever telling their readers and viewers why the Chinese government took draconian measures against the Covid pandemic: China’s biggest weakness is its health care system. South Korea has 10 intensive care beds per 100,000 people, America has 34, and China has only 4. As a result, the government feared that the health care system would not be able to handle a large influx of seriously ill patients. Most retirees are not vaccinated.

The reason that modern medicine, including hospitals with intensive care units, lags behind the rest of the world in China is that the Chinese believe in their traditional medicine (acupuncture, herbal medicine, diet, exercise, and manual therapy to correct imbalances in the body and promote mental and physical health) because it has been used for thousands of years and is steeped in tradition, belief, popularity and anecdote. Western remedies are far less popular because the vast majority of Chinese also believe that traditional Chinese medicine has fewer side effects and has a stronger restorative effect on the body.

In contrast to the seemingly completely out-of-touch Western media, East Asian media, which have a far better understanding of China, used less charged language related to Hu Jintao’s escort out of the Party Congress hall. It is also important to note in this context that, unlike Europe, Asian countries do not want to be drawn into the U.S. fight against China at their own expense, as I have detailed here.

For example, the conservative Korea Herald in Seoul soberly headlined that Hu Jintao was helped off the stage at the Party Congress.

C:\Users\Felix Abt\Desktop\Rubbish\Korea Herald.png
[Source: Screenshot courtesy of Felix Abt]

It can therefore be assumed that the escorting of Hu Jintao at the Party Congress will not go down in the Korean history books.

“Media war between China and the West”

On the one hand, everything that comes out of China is hyped up, twisted and used in the West for China-bashing. On the other hand, more important things that would contribute to a better understanding of the country are simply suppressed. Another recent example:

Do you know Dilana Dilixiati? No, of course you don’t. But you certainly know Peng Shuai, the famous Chinese tennis player who, according to Western media reports, accused a retired top politician of rape (the word rape does not appear in her original Chinese text), after the years-long secret love affair with many ups and downs between the two had gone to pieces.

Western politicians and media therefore immediately called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

C:\Users\Felix Abt\Desktop\Rubbish\Peng Shuai 4.png
C:\Users\Felix Abt\Desktop\Rubbish\Peng Shuai 5.png
Tennishead magazine wrote (December 6, 2021): “The USA are reportedly set to announce a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games this week in response to the censorship of Peng Shuai and her sexual assault allegations.” This boycott was carried out by the United States and its Western “coalition of the willing.” [Source: Screenshot courtesy of Felix Abt]

The athlete was subsequently often seen in public, laughing and talking to other people. Since she apparently did not disappear into a gulag, as Western politicians and media must have secretly hoped, she soon disappeared again from Western media discourse.

Dr. Pan Wang, a China expert from the University of New South Wales, provided background information and insights into the case on Australian television that were not available elsewhere.

She said it was only natural that Western organizations such as the World Tennis Association interpreted Ms. Peng’s social media post as a complaint of sexual misconduct and were suspicious of Beijing’s response given the lack of detailed information, communication or transparency and censorship on the matter.

However, she dismissed the accusation, saying there is no clear allegation of rape, which is a criminal offense in China, and “sexual harassment” falls under the Civil Code.

Whether the persuasion or coercion of the former vice premier described by Peng Shuai could be called “sexual assault” in the usual sense is subjective, she said.

She added that, while Beijing wants to suppress any controversy about its officials, the Western media are also pursuing their own political agenda regarding China.

“This case is about harassment, power and skepticism, and it occurred in a broader context of growing tensions between China and, for example, Australia, stemming from diplomatic tensions, trade disputes and growing accusations against China’s human rights, democracy and censorship,” she added.

She concluded: “So there’s a media war between China and the West and the Australian media here, too, and that’s reflected in the opposing views of the social media posts.”

The hidden story of the amazing career of a Uyghur woman

Back to Dilana Dilixiati. She, too, is a Chinese sports star. Her team had recently won an unexpected, sensational victory in the semifinals against basketball superpower Australia at the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup. Australian media reported, “They defeated the hosts 61-59 at the Sydney Superdome on Friday night in a thrilling encounter that was decided only in the final seconds.” The dramatic thriller sent shock waves.

https://english.news.cn/20220930/fb673e2b58db443ba425320f6178c7bd/5b33579a792d4703856a3d81409562f8.jpg
[Source: english.news.cn]

Those who followed the game immediately recognized that Dilana Dilixiati (on the left in the photo above) looked different from her teammates. The journalists must have noticed her. Strangely enough, the Uyghur, who writes her name in Uyghur like this: دىلانا دىلشات, which does not look like Mandarin, did not attract any interest, although she would have been more suitable than any other for a sensational success story inviting clicks.

The 1.94-meter (6’ 4-1/2”) center basketball player of the Guangdong Vermilion Birds, who helped the Chinese women’s national team win a silver medal at the World Cup, regularly visits her family in Xinjiang.

C:\Users\Felix Abt\Desktop\Rubbish\Dilana.png
[Source: Screenshot courtesy of Felix Abt]

A Twitter user found out that a Uyghur woman played on China’s successful national women’s basketball team and that the media did not want to know about it.

The Australian think tank ASPI, funded in particular by the Australian Department of Defense, the U.S. government, and the Western war industry, published the widely cited but refuted pamphlet “Uyghurs for Sale.” The organization was one of the driving forces in spreading the propaganda campaign of “genocide” against the Uyghurs in China, which originated in the United States.

The case is clear: Dilana Dilixiati, a Uyghur, and her ability to pursue a career as a top athlete and to travel, contradicts the Western narrative that is ingrained in people’s minds that Uyghurs, who are totally discriminated against, are prisoners and victims of genocide and cannot leave Xinjiang. Their story had to be kept quiet by the media, because consumers would naturally have noticed that there was something wrong with the prevailing narrative, and who likes to be manipulated.


CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptionsorders and donations from readers like you.

Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism

Click the whistle and donate

When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.

CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.

Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.

CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.

We sincerely thank you for your support.


Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.

Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.

Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.

By using this site, you agree to these terms above.


About the Author

24 COMMENTS

  1. Through an acquaintance of mine, I received feedback from a lecturer and China expert at John Hopkins University:

    “The incident with Hu Jintao at the party congress was puzzling, and no one is quite sure what actually happened. But there is no question that under Xi Jinping repression has increased greatly in China over the past seven years. This includes repression against the Left, especially those trying to organize workers. The big question now is what will happen with the current wave of protests against Covid controls.

    The article is very difficult to follow because of how the author mixes the sources he is criticizing with his own commentary. But I see no reason to apologize for repression in China the way he does. What I see in the US media is a move from being pretty friendly to China to becoming very hostile in recent years. They are following the general line of the US government, which has become much more hostile, under both Trump and Biden. This is increasingly dangerous situation.”

    And here is my answer:

    Clearly, the critic is guided more by his own ideological bias than by sound information and analysis.

    He speaks of repression, the existence of which I have never denied, but he fails to acknowledge that according to the world’s largest annual study of democracy, conducted by Latana in collaboration with the Alliance of Democracies, the smallest gap (9%) between citizens’ expectations of democracy and the actual representation they perceive exists in China (and Switzerland). In the United States, by contrast, 63% of respondents said that the U.S. government serves only a minority.
    Interestingly, far more people in the United States also complain about a lack of freedom of expression than in many other countries, including the supposedly “censored” Asian countries. Link: https://latana.com/democracy-perception-index/

    Yes, the Chinese government, which is smashing cartels and monopolies (in the interest of consumers and workers) and forcing the rich to pay taxes to get closer to its goal of shared prosperity, can be seen as repressive. Especially by billionaires like Jack Ma, China’s Jeff Bezos, who, for example, was forced to sell the South China Morning Post, which he owned. Jeff Bezos has it better: he can keep the Washington Post and his government will not prevent him from paying little or no taxes at all.

    The critic’s “big question now is what will happen with the current wave of protests against Covid controls.” The Atlantic, no more pro-China than the Alliance of Democracies mentioned above, has a smarter counter-question: “How Many COVID Deaths Will Chinese Protesters Accept?” and explains that “without these strict measures in place, a massive wave of new Omicron infections could overwhelm critical-care units and leave 1.55 million people dead.” Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/12/china-protests-against-strict-covid-restrictions/672315/

    • The “Xinjiang Police Files” only prove that China cracked down on Xinjiang or parts of it in 2017 and 2018. They are not evidence of genocide. If anything, they make that account less convincing. Nor have the media reported that many facilities have since been closed, that many checkpoints have been removed and replaced with quiet zones, that government officials responsible for the crackdown have since been replaced, and that detention rates, which were highest in 2017, have now dropped significantly.

      But the “Xinjiang Police Files” raise a number of questions:

      The hacking attack on the computer servers of the Public Security Bureau (PSB) of Konasheher (shufu xian 疏附县) and Tekes (tekesi xian 特克斯县) counties in Xinjiang apparently took place in late 2018 or early 2019.
      Why were they not released until 2-3 years later?
      Why were most of the files not released at all? (Is there cherry-picking behind this to give the story a more brutal twist?).
      Why is the likely authentic information in the files not detailed and coherent enough to be truly incriminating? Pictures of individuals provide little information about what they did or their situation, a large number of photos are from prisons and not from re-education and vocational centers, as are some speeches by officials and prison statements.
      What does a picture of a woman crying mean when no details are given about her arrest, detention, sentencing, and treatment?
      When it says “shoot to kill,” do they mean an escaped terrorist, someone arrested for growing a beard, or a student at a vocational training center?
      Why do many pictures (including photos with armed police in a prison, posing their rifles to show anti-prison-break exercises, or with assault rifles WITHOUT cartridge boxes) show prisons and not vocational training centers?
      Why did the media, in their coverage of Shufu and Tekes counties, from which all the files were stolen, where Uyghurs make up 90% of the population and where Uyghurs make up a large proportion of the police, speak of the “Xinjiang police” and the “Chinese police” and ignore the willingness of Uyghurs to drastically curb the rampant religious extremism that once roiled their region?
      Why don’t they mention that the detention rate in Xinjiang peaked in 2017 and has steadily declined thereafter to a level comparatively far below the detention rates of indigenous people in Australia and Canada?
      Finally, why do they call on the world to punish China but not Israel, France, or India, even though their Islamophobia and oppression of Muslim minorities is on the rise?

      https://mango-press.com/the-xinjiang-police-files-are-actually-boring-zenzs-reality-warping/

  2. The fact that there is a Uyghur on the Chinese Basketball is not relevant. According to leaked documents here are the main reasons why Uyghurs are detained in “Re-education Camps”.
    1)wearing a face veil 2) Having along beard 3) family member of a criminal or ex-prisoner 4) prone to being radicalized due to religious traditions in family 5) illegal preaching, attending or allowing room for illegal preaching 6) visiting one of 26 sensitive countries 7) holding a passport without visiting a foreign country 8) your wife wearing a veil 9) making an unauthorized pilgrimage 10) violation of family planning policy having more children than is allowed 11) potential threat (various reasons) 12) having a criminal record, ex-prisoner.

    As a side note the Jewish religion is banned in China, so the tiny population of 2000 Jewish people are not allowed to practice their religion.

    • I do not comment on “leaked documents” without knowing the source.

      But if the claims made in them are as serious as your last claim about Jews in China, then their seriousness is not beyond doubt. Just check Wikipedia, as of November 28, 2022: “In May 2010, the Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai was temporarily reopened to the local Jewish community for weekend services.[68] Synagogues are found in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, serving both native Chinese Jews, Israelis and diaspora Jewish communities across the world.[69]
      In 2001, Rabbi Shimon Freundlich from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement came and settled in Beijing with the mission of building and leading the Chabad-Lubavitch Centre of Beijing.[67] Kehillat Beijing continues its practice of conducting weekly lay-led Shabbat services, regular holiday observance, and community activities including retreats and celebrations. In 2007, the Sephardic community of Shanghai opened a synagogue, study hall, kosher kitchen, and educational classes for children and adults. The community has its own hacham, who functions as a teacher and chazan, in addition to Rabbi Ephraim Bezalel, who manages local community affairs and kashrut needs.[70] Since a significant amount of Chinese food products and food ingredients are exported to the American market, a number of kosher certification agencies send rabbis to China to serve as kosher inspectors (mashgichim). As of 2009, over 50 mashgichim have been stationed in China, 7 of them from the Orthodox Union.[71]…”

      • In Wikipedia under the following link:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_ChinaI

        I am copying the following section related to the 21st century. In this section it shows that things were somewhat okay until the the 2015. This is described at the very end. :There is also a video about this but I prefer not to share, because all the people are hiding their faces except one person is not hiding their face, so better not to share.

        21st century
        As of 2010, it is estimated that 2,000 to 3,000 Jews lived in Shanghai.[citation needed] In May 2010, the Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai was temporarily reopened to the local Jewish community for weekend services.[68] Synagogues are found in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, serving both native Chinese Jews, Israelis and diaspora Jewish communities across the world.[69]

        In 2001, Rabbi Shimon Freundlich from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement came and settled in Beijing with the mission of building and leading the Chabad-Lubavitch Centre of Beijing.[67] Kehillat Beijing continues its practice of conducting weekly lay-led Shabbat services, regular holiday observance, and community activities including retreats and celebrations. In 2007, the Sephardic community of Shanghai opened a synagogue, study hall, kosher kitchen, and educational classes for children and adults. The community has its own hacham, who functions as a teacher and chazan, in addition to Rabbi Ephraim Bezalel, who manages local community affairs and kashrut needs.[70] Since a significant amount of Chinese food products and food ingredients are exported to the American market, a number of kosher certification agencies send rabbis to China to serve as kosher inspectors (mashgichim). As of 2009, over 50 mashgichim have been stationed in China, 7 of them from the Orthodox Union.[71]

        As of 2019, Harbin could claim a single Jewish inhabitant, professor Dan Ben-Canaan, who helped advise the local government on restoring the city’s synagogues and other Jewish-related buildings.[72]

        Kaifeng’s Jewish community has reported increasing suppression by the authorities since 2015, reversing the modest revival it experienced in the 1990s. The observance of public religious services and the celebration of religious festivals like Passover and Sukkot have been prohibited, and Jewish community groups have been shut down. Signs have been removed from the Kaifeng Synagogue, a historical site located on Teaching the Torah Lane that is now under strict surveillance.[73]

        A small number of Chinese Jews have succeeded in making aliyah and immigrating to Israel with the help of private organisations such as Shavei Israel.

        • Anichka, the Chinese government recognizes five official religions – Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism, but not Judaism. It is not clear to me why Judaism, as a non-proselytizing religion with few adherents that least challenges the system, is not (yet) recognized. But here is an interesting article from May 2020 by an American Jew in China that gives good insight into this issue. https://signal.supchina.com/why-does-china-admire-the-jews/

          • Thank you for the information. My previous comments referred mainly to the Jewish people in Kaifeng, but in Shanghai and Beijing things may be different. So, my previous comments may require some modification.

          • I have updated my previous comments as per the World Jewish Congress which states the following:
            Jewish communal life in China is complicated and convoluted, representing the precarious situation of a community caught between the international, economic aspirations of a rising superpower and a ruling party intent on exercising and retaining complete authority. While the Jewish community in China has no official communal representative body, there still exists some form of communal activity in the country, primarily in international hubs such as Beijing and Shanghai, where there are sizeable Jewish expatriate communities. Cities such as these have organized and centralized Chabad Houses that provide a variety of Jewish services.

      • Here once again is the bottom section of Wikipedia:

        Kaifeng’s Jewish community has reported increasing suppression by the authorities since 2015, reversing the modest revival it experienced in the 1990s. The observance of public religious services and the celebration of religious festivals like Passover and Sukkot have been prohibited, and Jewish community groups have been shut down. Signs have been removed from the Kaifeng Synagogue, a historical site located on Teaching the Torah Lane that is now under strict surveillance.[73]

        A small number of Chinese Jews have succeeded in making aliyah and immigrating to Israel with the help of private organisations such as Shavei Israel.

        Reply

  3. I was more interested and disturbed by this comment by Abt in reference to Xi’s crackdown on the protesters in Hong Kong who preferred their style of democracy to that of Xi:

    “There are many problems in Xi’s system, and so far he and the party have not come up with convincing answers to them. But to imagine it simply as another Soviet Union or North Korea is missing the point. If people start to make decisions based on such skewed views and perceptions, that will lead to real-life consequences. Hong Kong is a living example of it.”

    “So it is okay to criticize the Chinese system harshly, and pundits and the media may deeply loathe it, but they do so while being quite clueless.”

    The violent crackdown in Hong Kong was far more critical than the subject of this story and Abt runs fancy circles around it. Democracy movements in authoritarian countries that compete with the USA can expect to find no friends within the traditional, ideological American Left. That was true during the Cold War and sadly, is just as true today.

  4. It is impossible to know very much about what was going on when Mr. Hu was escorted out of the room, but one does not have to have a PHD in psychology to see that something of significance was happening, just from observing the behavior patterns and facial expressions of the various dignitaries seated in the front row. We will probably never know the full story
    or even a quarter of the full story.

Leave a Reply