CGTN: “The ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip has led to heavy casualties on both sides. What’s China’s comment?”
Mao Ning: “China is closely following the escalating conflict between Palestine and Israel. We’re deeply saddened by the civilian casualties and oppose and condemn acts that harm civilians. We oppose moves that escalate the conflict and destabilize the region and hope fighting will stop and peace will return soon. The international community needs to play an effective role to jointly help cool down the situation.
To end the cycle of conflict between Palestine and Israel, it is essential to restart the peace talks, implement the two-state solution and settle the Palestine question fully and properly through political means at an early date so as to take care of each party’s legitimate concerns. China will continue to work relentlessly with the international community towards this end.”
Al Jazeera: “Western media and politicians call the Palestinians’ actions acts of terrorism without acknowledging the fact that these actions were taken in response to Israel’s military attacks on the Palestinians, in particular, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Embassy of Israel in China said that it hopes China, Israel’s good friend, will condemn the acts of Palestine. How do you respond to this? Also, the US has announced that it is sending additional ammunition and military equipment to Israel. What’s your comment?”
Mao Ning: “On the Palestine-Israel conflict, China has always been on the side of equity and justice. As a friend to both Israel and Palestine, what we hope to see is the two countries living together in peace and enjoying security and growth together. The key to achieving that lies in the realization of the two-state solution and establishment of an independent State of Palestine.
On your second question, China believes that dialogue and negotiation is the fundamental way out. We call on all parties to stop the fighting immediately to avoid further escalation and deterioration of the situation.”
If they just want to stay out of the situation they wouldn’t make this statement, which sets forth their position very thoroughly: a two state solution based on 1967 borders. They’ve made this position clear for decades.
Chinese influence is coming into West Asia without a doubt, but they do NOT intend to be another great power that has clearly picked a side, clearly favoring certain countries over others. Picking side is how the West had played things, divide and conquer, sow distrust. After all this time, all countries there KNOW the Americans will pick Israel above all others, and thus the US can never act as a genuine peacemaker, no one will trust them to be fair. Nor can Russia, which has picked their sides fairly clearly too. But China can, having established trade relations with many countries in the region, and therefore in a position to talk to all sides and actually have the believable neutrality to pass messages, promote negotiations, and maybe achieve something.
I’m little frustrated, because it seems like people just want China to turn into another US, to interfere deeply with other countries’ internal affairs but just do so with whatever side that is different than what the West had traditionally picked. That doesn’t result in a multipolar world where great powers respect every country and regions’ sovereignty; that’s just tilting the world toward another pole. So they aren’t going to do it, there is clearly stated principles behind their stance.
Finally, the Chinese historically did not played politics by using forceful power. For thousands of years, the way they dealt with foreign powers is through a system with tieres of BENEFITS and honors (apart from short aberration, such as Mao era). So they’ve always been more about the carrot than the stick, and now too they work more with dangling potential benefits to the West Asian countries in their effort toward providing more stability. It’s more about painting a picture to all the leaders about how great it would be if everyone is not fighting as much, the potential for prosperity, etc, which is always going to be a longer process than straight up sending violence.