China’s internet censorship is strict – but anti-Semitic slogans have simply remained unchanged since the start of the war in the Middle East. The most widespread is a conspiracy theory about the alleged work of Jews in China.
China censors the Internet more intensively than almost any other country in the world: everything that the state and party leadership does not like, that is too political, too critical, is quickly deleted. What is striking at the moment is that there has been a lot of anti-Semitic content since the beginning of the war in the Middle East. Bloggers openly agitate against Jews and Israel. But the otherwise often so rapid online censorship simply leaves a lot of it alone.
For example, the contribution by the Chinese influencer Gao Gailun. He has more than nine million followers on the platform Douyin, the Chinese Tiktok. He claims in this video that Jews have been causing conflict wherever they have settled for 3,000 years. Among other things, clearly anti-Semitic caricatures can be seen in the video.
It’s just one example of many. Posts of this type are clicked, liked and shared millions of times.
Rejoice over the terrorist attacks
Following Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7, the Israeli Embassy in China’s Weibo account was flooded with hateful comments. Users cheered the terrorist attacks, praised Hamas, and posted swastikas. The censorship also leaves intolerable comments under contributions from the German Embassy in China, says the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, Patricia Flor:
Chinese censorship on Chinese social media is often very fast and very efficient. We know this from our own experience. Posts from the German Embassy, for example on human rights, have also been deleted. That’s why it’s very noticeable that these anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments remain.”
The German Embassy staff deleted such comments themselves, says the ambassador. “But we also explain to our readers why we do this. Because Germany stands for freedom of expression – even on the Internet – but this also has limits. And the limit is reached where inciting statements that glorify National Socialism are made on the Internet. That’s forbidden in Germany and we can’t tolerate that here in China either.”
Conspiracy theory “Fugu Plan”
Elsewhere, hate comments on the Chinese Internet simply stop and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories continue to spread. A search for the phrase “Jews rule the world” returns over 13 million entries on the Chinese Internet. The increasingly nationalistic influencers see a conspiracy between Jews and their rival USA. Jews would control the USA is a conclusion that even the party newspaper “Global Times” came to in its Chinese online edition last week.
The most widespread conspiracy theory in China has a direct connection to its own country: Jews financed the Japanese invasion of China and in return they were promised a homeland in northern China (which was then controlled by Japan). This alleged fugu plan appears among the first results on China’s Internet when searching for “Jew.”
Beijing particularly criticizes Israel
Anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews have long been widespread in China. However, the blatant hatred of Jews to its current extent only came to light with the war between Israel and Hamas. The state and party leadership describes itself as neutral in the conflict in the Middle East. What is striking, however, is that the communist government in Beijing never tires of criticizing Israel, among other things, for the heavy bombardment of the Gaza Strip – a reaction to the Hamas terrorist attack. The suffering of the Palestinian civilian population is reported extensively in the state media, and Israel is portrayed as the aggressor. Most people in China are unaware of the ambivalence of the conflict.
To date, the state and party leadership has not clearly condemned the brutal attacks on Israel by the radical Islamic Hamas as terrorism; it has not even spoken of it as a terrorist organization.