93
Chinese Embassy Clarifies Untrue Media Reports Claiming “China prohibits investment in Israel”
(il.china-embassy.gov.cn)
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
93 points (100.0% liked)
news
24631 readers
707 users here now
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
-
To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
-
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
-
To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Look, I get why people are reacting emotionally to this. But a lot of these comments are using this story as a launchpad for some pretty unserious conclusions.
“China does nothing.”
“China doesn’t care about anyone outside its borders.”
“I only support China because the alternative is the West.”
“They may as well exist on another planet.”
“China supports the Zionist entity.”
This is supposed to be a communist space. Where is the dialectical and historical materialism? Where is the analysis beyond “this feels bad”? Giving up the right to moral outrage divorced from material analysis is one of the many unfortunate parts necessary of becoming a communist.
“China does nothing” is straight-up CIA talking points/meme warfare. The CPC very obviously does things, if you spend even a few minutes looking through a material lens as opposed to a moral one. The DPRK exists as a modern AES state thanks to Chinese backing. Cuba has substantial solar infrastructure (even if still insufficient) because of China. Much of the Global South now has alternatives to IMF austerity and structural adjustment because China created parallel non-imperialist development channels.
China also clearly cares about people beyond her borders. What people actually seem upset about is that the CPC refuses to sacrifice China’s own stability, development, and security to satisfy Western-style moral posturing. That’s not a “lack of internationalism.” It's important to separate internationalism from performative self-immolation. China does not yet have the strength to wage total war against the Western world and it's dogs.
It also matters to be precise: trade is not the same thing as political alignment or military support. Mao explicitly addressed this. Trading with a country does not equal endorsing its actions or assisting its wars. The USSR traded with fascist states while materially supporting anti-fascist struggle. The distinction is whether you are actually aiding resistance, not whether commodity exchange exists and it is pretty clear China is backing the resistance even if they won't start WWIII.
People also keep acting like severing trade with Israel is some low-cost gesture. It very clearly isn’t. Israel functions as a U.S. forward operating base and Euro-American tech hub. Any serious unilateral economic break would immediately trigger retaliation from Washington and it's lackeys. Pretending otherwise is idealist nonsense. States operate in a world of force relations and kicking the kings favourite dog is a good way to have that force turned on you.
Does China’s foreign policy involve ugly realpolitik? Yes. Is it extremely frustrating at times? Also yes. But pretending China does nothing or is indifferent to global suffering requires ignoring material reality. China’s entire strategy is about surviving imperialist containment while slowly weakening Western monopoly over development pathways. That’s a long game. It’s not pretty, and it’s not emotionally satisfying, but it’s material.
If your "analysis" begins and ends with “this makes me uncomfortable,” or "this is morally wrong" divorced from material analysis, you are doing liberal moralism, not scientific socialism.
I usually find the consensus and conversation on here grounded and method-driven. This thread has been slightly disappointing.
I won’t pretend to have a solid grasp of this situation, but I think that it should be easy enough for anybody to acknowledge that the PRC’s trading with an apartheid state is not equivalent to Imperial America’s trading therewith.
To use one historic example: the ways wherein corporate America, the Dominion of Canada, Finland, the Kingdom of Italy, the Estado Novo, the Spanish State, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Swiss Confederation, Turkish capitalists, occupied Palestine and the United Kingdom traded with the Third Reich were all vastly more consequential than Moscow’s negotiations with Berlin.
While it remains disappointing that Moscow traded with any dictatorships of the bourgeoisie at all, I’d be jumping to conclusions if I decided that it must have been because they all had the same interests. Were that the case, the relations between them would have always been much calmer, and nobody would have invaded the RSFSR. Therefore, I don’t feel comfortable concluding that Moscow traded with dictatorships of the bourgeoisie out of callosity, betrayal, or some other cynical explanation. A people’s republic trading with a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is another consequence of global capitalism, and resisting its pressure is easier said than done.
So yes, it is disappointing that Beijing is trading with an apartheid state, and no, no-one has to like it. Even so, there is no need to jump to conclusions here and conclude that Beijing is callous or suddenly has the same interests as Washington. The real explanation is more complex than both. My therapist used to tell me something to the effect that it’s best to walk a mile in someone’s shoes before passing judgment, and while I know that it sounds silly to apply personal advice like that to a geopolitical discussion, it is a good suggestion for beginners anyway. Above all, the PRC’s negotiations with an apartheid state are minor compared to the sheer amount of resources that the Western Bloc is pouring into this occupation.
That concludes my informal approach to this situation.