Monday, July 17, 2017

Israeli universities in China

I asked an Arab colleague/comrade who is an expert on China to comment on this story. He wrote: "There is an interesting side story here not on the radar: alot of Chinese are coming to realize that Israeli innovation claims have been exaggerated and that the technological gap between the two sides is not as big as the Israelis make it seem. I suspect in a decade or so even this Israeli "selling point" as a start-up nation will be moot for the Chinese. I heard this repeated in different contexts in Beijing during my last visit - intentionally and inadvertently. Additionally, Israel cant escape from the specter of its conjoinment with the United States, and given the trajectory of Sino-American relations (and to a lesser extent, Sino-Indian relations) are taking, they wont be able to build up the influence they seek.   There is, weirdly enough, an undercurrent of anti-semitism at play (which bounces off the equally weird philo-semitism you see among some elites) in China. "