by Steven W. Mosher
Pick any terrorist group, rogue regime, or horrific conflict in the world today and you’ll likely find that China is behind it.
Take Hamas for example.
The bodies of its 1,400 Israeli and 30 American victims were not even cold before China’s state media began spewing out incendiary headlines claiming that Israel, with U.S. encouragement, was carrying out indiscriminate attacks on Gaza civilians—rather than the other way around.
China’s social media was filled with the vilest anti-Semitic comments from semi-official sources. The many atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, including removing—and beheading—an unborn baby from the body of a dead Israeli mother, went unmentioned.
Hamas too gentle?
Su Lin, a prominent Chinese influencer, claimed after the brutal attack that “Hamas is still too gentle. Israel is a Jewish version of Nazi and militarism.”
Such posts would be instantly removed if they contradicted the thinking of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But they are encouraged as Beijing tries to undermine Israel—along with much of the rest of the world.
China’s propaganda onslaught has been so vicious that Jerusalem’s ambassador told Beijing earlier this week to stop supporting Hamas terrorism and stop acting with hostility towards the Jewish state.
But Hamas receives far more than just marketing and moral support from Beijing. Does anyone believe that the terrorist group was able to plan such a complex operation against Israel, breach its highly sophisticated defensive wall, and disable its communications system, all on its own? And how could an attack that, according to Hamas’s leaders, was more than two years in the making not have been detected by Israeli intelligence early on?
The answers may yet be determined, but part of the reason may be that the terrorist group reportedly switched over to Chinese-made Huawei phones and electronic devices this time around.
A feature, not a bug
The Israelis may have been flummoxed by the new devices, but Chinese intelligence was surely listening in. Back-door access by Beijing is a feature, not a bug, of electronic devices manufactured in China.
Beyond mere hardware, China likely had a hand in the large-scale cyber attacks that reduced Israel’s response time to the incursion from Gaza.
“The Iranians are clever, but that level of cyberattacks had to have support from abroad,” says Tel Aviv-based intelligence analyst David Wurmser. He went on to suggest that Iran’s efforts were reinforced by China and North Korea.
Hamas also brought some very advanced weaponry to Israel from Gaza, such as thermobaric rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs.
These weapons were manufactured in Iran or North Korea, notes Wurmser, but the state-of-the-art technology likely came from China.
Some in Hamas even have personal ties to China, such as Mohammed Deif, the terrorist leader reportedly responsible for the planning of the massacre. Chinese dissident journalist Lu De and others report that the PLO sent Deif to China in 1996, where the CCP enrolled him in the PLA’s Ordnance Engineering College in Shijiazhuang, China.
There he learned the skills he would later use to kill Israelis. The CCP even supplied him with a Chinese Muslim wife, whom Lu suggests is a conduit for communications with Beijing.
Behind Hamas, Iran; behind Iran, China
Iran’s Islamist regime has been calling for the destruction of Israel for decades, and there is little doubt—outside the Biden administration–that it helped execute the Hamas attack.
But behind Iran stands a far more formidable foe of Israel and the United States.
Indeed, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’ massacre in Israel to Beijing’s support of the brutal military junta in Myanmar, China is aggressively cultivating a new Cold War pitting the CCP—along with its surrogates and proxies—against the West.
Frank Gaffney, the head of the D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, believes that “The Chinese Communist Party was consulted about and quite possibly actually greenlighted the murderous Russian and jihadist invasions that now constitute two fronts in what may be heading the world into a larger conflict.”
Gaffney points to the peculiar pattern of visits to Beijing that links the two most dangerous conflicts now convulsing the planet. Prior to invading Ukraine in late February 2022, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing to seek Xi Jinping’s support. A half-dozen agreements were signed and the two entered into a quasi-military alliance.
This time as well, in the months leading up to last week’s terrorist attack, top Palestinian and Iranian leaders made pilgrimages to Beijing to consult with CCP leaders.
Even Syria’s Bashar Assad joined the parade, signing a “strategic partnership” agreement with Xi on September 22nd. In what is perhaps a sign of what is to come in the Golan Heights, Assad left his children behind in China when he flew back to Damascus.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Putin was back in Beijing this week as Israel and Gaza rage.
In the broadest sense, the attack on Israel—along with the ongoing conflagration in Ukraine and the increasing aggressiveness of North Korea, Pakistan, and Serbia towards their neighbors—was enabled by this unholy alliance between Iran, Russia, and China.
Unequal partner
But this is not a relationship of equals. Rather, it is a compact in which China, with its deep pockets and technological sophistication, is the driving force.
While Iran and Russia are jockeying for dominance in their backyards, China has truly global ambitions and is using the other two in this quest. The attack on Israel—by a group intent upon its total destruction–is clearly a proxy war by China on one of America’s closest allies.
Just as Hamas and Hezbollah are extensions of Iran, so Iran itself is in many ways a proxy for China.
As former Deputy Undersecretary for Defense Stephen Bryen notes, China “supplies Iran with all the stuff it needs to make all the missiles in the world.” So even when Hamas terrorists are trained in Iran, China is the source of their weaponry.
China is following the same playbook in the Middle East that it did in Russia: Secretly encourage an attack on a U.S. ally or potential ally—and promise to aid the aggressor behind the scenes. Then, when the attack happens, loudly call for a negotiated settlement–without mentioning that it was your partner who committed the barbarous acts in the first place.
Case in point: As Israel continues to dismantle Hamas, Beijing now claims that it wants “to help cool down the escalating Palestine-Israel conflict” that it helped stoke. In fact, it is doing the opposite. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi spends his days criticizing Israel’s response to the worst terrorist attack in its history.
A nefarious agenda
In a recent speech, Wang claimed “The survival of the Israelis has been guaranteed, but who cares about the survival of the Palestinians?”
Iran supported Hamas knowing that it intended to provoke a complete Middle Eastern showdown. To judge from its incendiary rhetoric, it hopes that Israel will level Gaza and that other Muslim nations will then unite in an all-out war against Israel.
But why would China, which has no particular animus against Jews, empower Iran and Hamas? Clearly, because it hopes the U.S. would be drawn into such a conflict and become, yet again, bogged down in the Middle East like it was for decades in Iraq.
China, by its own account, has long been in this new Cold War with the United States. It was Deng Xiaoping who, watching the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, observed to his CCP comrades that America had won the first Cold War. But there was now a new Cold War, he went on to say, this time between America and China, which China intended to win.
But both Washington and Wall Street ignored his words. Instead, they’ve spent the past 30 years trying to bribe China into becoming a responsible member of the U.S.-led world order.
Funding China
Wall Street financed China’s rise. Fortune 500 companies transferred their cutting-edge technology to Beijing—or had it stolen. Congress voted China into the World Trade Organization, and cheap “Made in China” products flooded our nation.
We have enabled the rise of the country that, most Americans finally understand, is engaged in a Cold War against us. The attacks from the CCP take many different forms, from seeding viruses and spreading fentanyl at home, to using rogue regimes and terrorist groups as proxies abroad.
There is an arsonist on the loose in the world, lighting the fires of conflict wherever it can.
As America disperses its forces and depletes its munitions in response, China calculates that its chances of one day achieving its ultimate goal—the successful retaking of Taiwan—will only increase.
Xi Jinping’s idol, the late Chairman Mao, once remarked: “Great chaos is needed to achieve great order in the world.” With Russia grinding away at Ukraine, and the Middle East in flames, the “great chaos” is well underway.
The “great order” that the CCP leader dreams of will eventually begin with that Taiwan conquest, but it will not end until a new global order under Chinese hegemony is created—or until the CCP is defeated.
Originally published at pop.org by the Population Research Institute. Reprinted with the permission of PRI. An earlier version of the article was published by the New York Post. Steven Mosher is president of PRI and the author of Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese, Journey to the Forbidden China, Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream Is the New Threat to World Order, and many other works.
