Chinese State Media Capitalize on Confrontation at Forum to Push Anti-Israel Narrative
Udumbara
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China’s state-run media outlets are pushing an anti-Israel narrative built around a public confrontation in which a Chinese scholar clashed with an Israeli military officer over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The incident occurred on the sidelines of the annual Xiangshan Forum, which is widely regarded as China’s version of the Shangri-La Dialogue, a premier regional security summit held annually in Singapore. According to China’s state-run media, the heated exchange happened on Sept. 17, the first day of the three-day forum.
In online videos shared by state-run media, Yan Xuetong, a prominent Chinese scholar and dean of the Institute of International Relations at China’s Tsinghua University, can be heard talking to an Israeli officer, in a way Chinese media later described as “lecturing.”
The Epoch Times confirmed the identity of the officer as Col. Elad Shoshan, a military attaché in the Israeli Embassy in Beijing.
“You killed more than 70,000 civilians,” Yan says, while waving his finger in the Israeli officer’s face.
The exchange became material for the Chinese media to push anti-Israel propaganda. It appeared in various Chinese media reports. Chinese state media The Paper also circulated a clip that quickly went viral on the Chinese internet.
“So satisfying!” reads one headline. Another states: “Chinese Scholar Gives Israeli Official a Lesson Face to Face.”
The incident reveals the Chinese regime’s longstanding stance on the Gaza war, which started with Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas launching a surprise attack in October 2023 that killed an estimated 1,200 people, many of them civilians, and took more than 250 hostages.
With the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, at least one Chinese military commentator, who once taught at the Chinese military academy, had spread a conspiracy that Israel might be tied to Kirk’s death, a claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuted as a “monstrous big lie.”
While Shoshan in the exchange tells Yan that the “real reason of this [Gaza] war is that this terror organization Hamas is still holding our hostages,” Yan says that the solution to the Gaza war is to “work with the U.N. and agree [on] the two-state solution to establish a state of Palestine.”
Li Linyi, a China-affairs political commentator, told The Epoch Times that the Xiangshan Forum is essentially a platform for the Chinese regime to disseminate propaganda.
As for Yan or other Chinese academics who attend the annual event, they usually come with a certain political agenda in mind, Li said.
“Their goal is to present the Chinese Communist Party as the defender of the existing U.N. system, the leader of anti-American countries in a new world order, the leader of the Global South, and a friend of Muslim countries around the world. To this end, they are willing to offend Israel,” Li said.
Li added that Yan mentioned the United Nations for a specific reason.
“The main reason is that the CCP is the biggest beneficiary of this system,” Li said. “After decades of infiltrating the United Nations, the CCP now controls most of the U.N. agencies—these resources help the CCP in its confrontation with the United States.”
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