China is standing against the Jews — and India with us.
Two of the world’s oldest civilizations are moving in opposite directions on the Jewish question, and the implications are global.
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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
For most of history, both India and China were considered anomalies in the story of Jewish exile.
Neither had a tradition of pogroms. Neither produced a theology of anti-Judaism. Neither built political movements around Jew-hatred.
Yet, in 2026, the trajectories of these two ancient civilizations are visibly diverging — not only in geopolitics, but in their posture toward Jews and the Jewish state. One is deepening strategic partnership with Israel while expressing civilizational empathy.
The other is incubating a new, state-tolerated wave of antisemitism untethered to any Jewish presence at all.
Understanding this divide requires going backward before going forward.
Jews have lived in India for more than two millennia. The Cochin Jews trace their presence to antiquity, possibly as early as the time of King Solomon’s trade routes. The Bene Israel community settled along the Konkan coast centuries ago. Later came the Baghdadi Jews in cities like Kolkata and Mumbai.
What is extraordinary is not simply that Jews lived in India; it is that they lived there without persecution. There were no Indian pogroms, no expulsions, no forced conversions, no blood libels.
Indian society, shaped by Hindu civilizational pluralism, tended to absorb minority communities rather than demonize them. Jews were seen as another ancient people practicing their own traditions, not as theological enemies or conspiratorial threats. In the early days of India’s cinema industry, Jewish actresses (especially from the Baghdadi Jewish community) often took leading roles because many Indian women from more conservative backgrounds were discouraged or forbidden from appearing on screen.
When most of India’s Jews emigrated to the State of Israel after its founding in 1948, they left not because of violence, but because of Zionism. India remains one of the very few countries in Jewish history where exile did not mean trauma.
China’s Jewish story is different — smaller, thinner, and more symbolic. The Kaifeng Jewish community dates back roughly a thousand years, likely arriving via Silk Road trade routes. Over time, they assimilated into broader Chinese society.
The most significant chapter came in the 1930s and 1940s, when Shanghai became a rare sanctuary for more than 20,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe, since Shanghai was one of the only places in the world that required no visa.
For decades, Chinese discourse toward Jews was largely positive. Jews were often admired as intelligent, commercially adept, and civilizationally resilient. A 2004 Jewish People Policy Institute report even described a kind of Chinese “philosemitism,” rooted in viewing Jews and Chinese as the “two oldest living civilizations.”
But admiration without historical rootedness can turn quickly.
There was never a deep Jewish presence in China. Today, only a few thousand Jews live across mainland China and Hong Kong combined. Antisemitism there is not born of proximity; it is imported. And increasingly, it is amplified.
India formally recognized Israel in 1950, but kept relations quiet for decades, balancing Cold War alignments and domestic Muslim sensitivities. Full diplomatic normalization came in 1992.
The breakthrough moment was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2017 visit to Israel, the first ever by a sitting Indian prime minister. Modi publicly embraced Israel without routing the visit through Ramallah, breaking with decades of diplomatic choreography.
Then, on Wednesday, Modi arrived in Israel for a second visit, where he addressed the Knesset (Israeli parliament), saying: “India stands with Israel firmly with full conviction.” When he closed with “Am Yisrael Chai” (“The nation of Israel lives”) and “Jai Hind” (“Long live India”), it was more than symbolism; it was civilizational signaling.
Strategically, India and Israel cooperate on defense technology, intelligence, water management, agriculture, cybersecurity, and the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor, linking India to Europe via the Middle East.
This dynamic is not unfolding in spite of more than two years of war between Israel and Iran and its network of terror proxies, but because of it. Across the region, leaders watched tunnels implode, nuclear infrastructure take direct hits, senior commanders eliminated inside their own homes, and Iranian assets degraded across multiple countries. The lesson they drew was blunt: Israeli hard power carried more strategic weight than the rhetoric of Islamist clerics or the protests on Western campuses.
That same calculus is pulling Central Asia closer to Israel. Kazakhstan’s move toward the Abraham Accords is not a symbolic flourish from a country that already maintains diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. Like several of its neighbors, the former Soviet republic is seeking something tangible: access to Israeli innovation, Emirati capital, American security architecture, and — perhaps most crucially — a pathway out of China’s tightening strategic embrace.
Beijing currently dominates much of Central Asia’s infrastructure, transit corridors, digital systems, and industrial development through the Belt and Road Initiative, an expansive web of projects stretching across Eurasia. While marketed as development, the initiative has left many regional economies tethered to Chinese financing and exposed to Chinese political leverage. Dependence has become structural.
An alternative route linking the Mediterranean, the Gulf, and Eurasia through Israel offers these states something rare: strategic optionality. Such a corridor could open access to energy cooperation, artificial intelligence, cyber defense, and diversified supply chains that China cannot easily replicate. Just as important, it would provide entry into Western markets without requiring passage through Chinese-controlled systems.
That framework is already taking shape. The India–Middle East–Europe Corridor connects India to Europe via the Gulf and Israel, forming a central pillar of Washington’s emerging strategy to counter Beijing’s influence across Eurasia. Where the Belt and Road Initiative binds states to China through debt exposure and infrastructure dependence, this corridor aims to integrate them into a network defined by technology sharing, open markets, and security cooperation.
The Abraham Accords now function as a complementary layer to this architecture. Their expansion reflects a simple reality: Israel has demonstrated its ability to dismantle Iranian-backed military and terrorist networks through a fusion of intelligence superiority and operational precision, while maintaining a civilian technology sector that remains unmatched in the region. Those capabilities translate directly into strategic value.
Partnership with Israel, therefore, is not ideological theater; it is a practical alignment. Gulf states contribute capital, logistics, and energy infrastructure. The United States supplies security guarantees and industrial scale. Israel offers advanced technology and proven military effectiveness. Together, these elements begin to loosen Beijing’s hold over the region.
And yet, Israel and China also have diplomatic relations, established in 1992 as well. For decades, ties were pragmatic and largely positive, centered on technology and trade. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi even visited the Western Wall in 2013 wearing a kippah, a moment symbolizing diplomatic warmth.
But in recent years, several shifts have occurred such as the growing rivalry with the United States, strategic alignment with the Islamic Republic of Iran and Arab states (China accounted for more than 80 percent of Iran’s total seaborne oil exports in 2025), anti-Western narrative consolidation, toleration of antisemitic tropes in media and academia, and hosting Palestinian factions in Beijing (including Hamas and Palestinian Authority signings).
According to the Jewish People Policy Institute, antisemitic rhetoric has migrated from fringe online spaces into mainstream Chinese discourse. Influencers quote from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Universities incubate anti-Israel narratives that collapse distinctions between Jews, Judaism, and Israel.
In Harbin, Jewish heritage sites have been scrubbed. In Beijing, a musical about Shanghai’s Jewish refugees was canceled. Antisemitism in China is not theological; it is geopolitical. And that may make it more dangerous.
A parallel front in this shifting landscape is not military or diplomatic; it’s digital. On platforms like TikTok, which is heavily influenced by the Chinese government, content about Israel has become a battleground where narratives compete for attention. Recent research showed pro-Palestinian posts significantly outnumbered pro-Israel posts by a ratio of 19 to 1, with a large gap in views (17 to 1).1 And studies suggest users spending over 30 minutes daily on TikTok are more likely to hold anti-Israel or antisemitic views.
The concerns about TikTok becoming one of the most inhospitable digital environments for Israel gained additional credibility following a Wall Street Journal experiment in which reporters created a series of fictional user accounts and allowed the app’s algorithm to shape their feeds. Within hours, nearly all of the accounts were being served a steady strain of content related to the Israel-Hamas war — and the vast majority of it was sharply critical of Israel.2
The imbalance is evident not only in what circulates widely on TikTok, but also in what struggles to appear at all — Israeli perspectives themselves. A number of Israeli content creators say their posts are routinely restricted or removed under the vague justification of “community guidelines” violations. One such creator, Danny Buller, reported a sharp drop in reach after he publicly discussed TikTok’s ties to Communist China, suggesting that visibility can be quietly throttled when content crosses certain political lines.
Internal tensions have surfaced as well. In early 2024, Barak Hershkowitz, who managed TikTok Israel’s public-sector partnerships, resigned after raising concerns with company leadership about what he described as an inconsistent approach to violent content and anti-Israel incitement. Among the issues he highlighted was the platform’s refusal to allow posts from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to be promoted or widely distributed.
And so, the divergence between India and China reflects three deeper differences. First, India is a democracy with decentralized discourse; antisemitism there has no state sponsorship. In China, the government maintains tight media control; when antisemitic rhetoric spreads widely, it is either sanctioned or tolerated.
Second, India increasingly aligns with the United States and the West; Israel fits into that axis. But China positions itself against Western hegemony; Jews are often perceived, through classic conspiratorial lenses, as influential in American power structures. Therefore, hostility toward Washington morphs into hostility toward Jews.
And third, India’s majority culture sees itself as ancient and pluralistic; minorities do not threaten its identity. But in China, the current stream of nationalism is more centralized and reactive, increasingly searching for ideological adversaries.
The irony is striking: For decades, China admired Jewish success. Now, those same generalizations (intelligence, wealth, influence) are reinterpreted as malevolence. “Philosemitism and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin,” a recent Jewish People Policy Institute report warned.
India, by contrast, has historically treated Jewish distinctiveness as unremarkable. The divergence is not yet irreversible. China could recalibrate, and India could shift politically. But as of now, two of the world’s oldest civilizations are sending very different signals to one of the world’s smallest.
For Israel and the global Jewish community, this is not merely academic. Asia is part of the future of global power — and how its rising giants view Jews will shape far more than bilateral trade.
“Pro-Palestinian posts significantly outnumbered pro-Israeli posts on TikTok, new Northeastern research shows.” Northeastern University.
Institute for National Security Studies
Next Christmas: tandoori yes, egg rolls no!
Thank you Joshua. An excellent analysis of the present geopolitical situation.
You mentioned the "The India–Middle East–Europe Corridor". If it does materialize, it will be a bonanza for everyone concerned. There are though several hurdles on the hill. Saudi and Jordan. Let's see how this develops. It will be much clearer after the downfall of the murderous Ayatollah regime of Iran.
The second issue is China. If they have strategically picked their cards with the worst Islamic terrorist regimes and organizations, even though they suffer daily from Islamic terror. Let them enjoy their future.