The Roots of Anti-Semitism in Contemporary China - Scholarly Review Journal
In 2007, Song Hongbing, a Chinese author living in the US, published his famous yet controversial series “The Currency Wars”. With a reported 200,000 official ...
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Jin Canrong, a professor in international relations with 2.7 million followers on the Chinese media site Weibo, comments on the issue saying, since “Israel right now is crazed with killing, the U.N. can't be of much use this time”. In the comment section, a response saying “Hitler truly knows the Jews'' was the most liked comment of all (Wang, 2023). Yet, such views take root much earlier on the Internet than many people realize. In 2019, an article appeared on Wangyi News with the title, “Why Jewish people are not worthy of sympathy.” Though it receives relatively little attention, its content, accusing the Jewish people of deception, hypocrisy, drug trades and more (Wangyi, 2019), reflects the long-present opinions of Anti-semitism on the Chinese Internet even before its eruption in the 2020s. So why does China, a state that seemingly has nothing to do with the long history of Anti-semitism in Western countries with events such as the holocaust, generate such violent outcry in its internal conversations regarding the Jews and Jewish history? The answer lies in the complex web woven by the historical, cultural heritage, recent opinions, publications and China's situation in the ever-changing world of international relations that dates back into the early 2000s and even the Second World War. HISTORY AND GENESIS: THE EMERGENCE OF ANTI-SEMITIC VIEWS IN THE 2000s AND THEIR HISTORICAL ROOTS Currency Wars In 2007, Song Hongbing, a Chinese author living in the US, published his famous yet controversial series “The Currency Wars”. With a reported 200,000 official copies and 400,000 unlicensed copies sold in 2009 circulation (McGregor, 2007). The book received a wide audience in the Chinese populace and was a best seller at the time. The series claims that the world economy, in particular that of the Western Economy, is controlled by a family of Jewish bankers known as the Rothschild Family. This family, according to the book, used methods such as supporting the family with the US federal reserve, secret access to information and manipulation of the financial market to achieve its purposes. In the first chapter of the book, the author uses a series of gripping, mysterious phrases to describe the actions of the Rothchild family: “Strict family control, rigged operations of utmost secrecy, coordination as precise as that of a clock, earlier access to information than the market, completely cold and rational, a never-ending desire to wealth… made the Rothschild family unstoppable in the cruel maelstrom of the past 200 years of war, finance, and politics, creating the largest financial empire the world has ever seen” (Song, 2007/2021). In the next chapter, to further reinforce his claim, Song gives an example of the conduct of the Rothschild family. He asserts that Nathan Rothschild, during the Napoleonic wars, was able to exploit the situation of the battle of Waterloo in favor of his own financial gains. According to the author of the book, Nathan Rothschild, despite knowing Duke Wellington's victory a day prior to that of the British public, deliberately let the rumors of Wellington’s defeat flood the British stock exchange market, dramatically lowering the price of the British Scholarly Review Online - Winter 2024/2025 national debt. Afterward, he started buying up massive quantities of the then extremely low-priced British national debt. The next day, when Wellington’s messenger arrived with the news of the British victory, the price of the British national debt rose dramatically. When people searched for the whereabouts of most national debt, they found it in the hands of Nathan Rothschild.