EVENTSPAST EVENTS
Israel-Asia Center Chinese New Year Dinner
New York
In February 2012, the Israel-Asia Center held a Chinese New Year Dinner. The event featured guest speaker, Howe Wang – a fellow on the 2011-12 Israel-Asia Leaders Fellowship, who spoke on ‘Twenty Years of Sino-Israeli Relations: A New Era of Israeli Technological Engagement’.
Excerpts of Howe’s speech can be viewed below:
“What’s the connection between China and Israel? People in different places react in different ways to the question, and I believe everyone here has their own answer.
The connection between Israel and China can be traced back to thousands of years when a group of Jews migrated to Kaifeng, the ancient capital of China, in the 12th century. In modern era, Israel remembers how in the darkest hour for Jews, when the world closed its doors on the Jewish plight, China became the haven for thousands of Jews escaping Europe. During the Second World War, the Shanghai Ghetto hosted about 20,000 Jewish refugees. In fact, the Chinese, lacking a Christian or Islamic tradition, is one of the few places in the world where Jews were never persecuted.
After the establishment of communist China, Israel was the first country in the Middle East and one of the first in the world to recognize the People’s Republic of China. However, due to China’s relations with the Middle East, the US and Soviet Union, the Chinese government initially refused to recognize Israel. But ironically, the two secretly began building military ties in the 1980s, exchanging visits of delegations of academicians, businessmen and industrialists.
It was not until 1992 that normal diplomatic relations were established, between Israel and China. After the establishment of diplomatic ties, the Israelis taught the Chinese about advanced irrigation technology and agriculture in hope to create a sustainable agricultural industry. This is particularly important to China.
The present Chinese attitude toward Jews is that they are smart, powerful, and shrewd in business; the Chinese are especially fascinated by the fact that the Jewish civilization has endured 2000 years of exile and persecution and Jews have retained their integrity. Both cultures have shared values in family, community, career, history of immigration and personal struggle. Such shared values create a foundation for the possibility of intimate collaboration and long-term partnership between China and Israel in a global society.
Talking about technology and trade exchange between Israel and China, with a population of less than 8 million, Israel has no domestic market to speak of. China, on the other hand, is not only the world’s largest population but also has a huge and growing middle class. Twenty years ago, the bilateral trade was only 60 million dollars a year; it has since increased to 8 billion dollars last year. We have also witnessed the strengthening of the mutual connection.
I would like to mention one case, which is the city of Chengdu, where my family was originally from. On May 16, 2008, only four days after the devastating earthquake, diplomats from the Israeli Embassy visited the epicenter and made one of the first donations to the area. Israeli Ambassador Amos Nadai is now an honorary citizen of Chengdu. One Israeli businessman once told me that when he had a public meeting and presentation in Chengdu, the venue was packed and people came just to pay tribute to Israel. Currently, two trends in China with direct impact on Sino-Israel relations is, first, the quick expansion of Christian groups, especially evangelical Christians in China, the other one is China’s intention to balance Iran’s oil supply with partnership from Saudi Arabia.
But beyond that, what has been particularly interesting to me is the synergy the two nations enjoy in cleantech collaboration. With very limited natural resource and obvious physical constraint, Israel’s survival had to rely on the only resources the nation had –.brains and innovation. Israeli innovation positions itself as a natural partner for China. Less than 10% of China’s land is arable. China is one of the world’s most polluted areas. To help you understand exactly how bad the air quality in Beijing is, the US embassy in Beijing began tweeting hourly pollution reports in 2009. It reports the air quality by indicating if it is good, bad, or hazardous. One day in 2010 it said ‘crazy bad’, and the US officials quickly replaced it with the term “beyond index”, meaning the air quality detector stopped working due to the high density of pollutants in the air. That’s when levels of tiny particulate matter in the air surged past 500, about 20 times higher than the guideline issued by the World Health Organization. The environment issue is definitely one of the most pressing issues on the Chinese government’s agenda.
Last year, China itself invested in total of 50 billion dollars in cleantech – the largest amount in the world. However, lack of game-changing technology and the shadow of cheap manufacturing haunt the cleantech industry. Meanwhile, working with the Israel-Asia Center and Israel Cleantech Ventures, I really see that, with the world’s highest concentration of PhDs, engineers and technicians, Israel is truly an innovation powerhouse. A typical Israeli cleantech innovation is low cost, extremely efficient, and requires minimal alteration of existing infrastructure, which is perfect for manufacturing and application in China.
During my years in journalism, I realized that no single nation is likely to dominate the clean energy economy and no nation has yet mastered both the invention and the low-cost manufacturing of clean technology. It is clear that winners in the new-energy economy will exploit the strengths of each side. Combining China’s manufacturing power and Israel’s fast innovation would really translate Israel’s engineering know-how into a force that is able to reshape the global landscape of energy efficiency, pollution control, and water management.
China may become the 2nd largest export destination for Israel by 2012. However, there are still problems lying ahead in the future of the bilateral trading relationship. One of the key issues that contribute to the barrier is the lack of mutual understanding and exposure, which hinders numerous business transactions.
Fixing that takes strategy, time and patience – something that is lacking in contemporary Israeli business mentality, yet vital for penetrating the bureaucratic and commercial sphere in China. For Israelis, China still is a remote populous, rich image with a problematic legal and IP system. Furthermore, I see the Israeli short-term planning as a serious barrier in furthering a partnership with China. The Chinese’ love affair with Jewish civilization lies mainly within the business bubble but they are mostly superficial and are sometimes caricatures of Jewish stereotypes, albeit positive.
It is vital to help the Chinese realize that Israeli technology is a potent and effective solution for their problems. It is pleasant to see that Start-Up Nation just hit the #1 book on the World Economy on Amazon China. And luckily, the Israel Asia Center has just stepped in and is making huge progress on educating societies from both sides.
I recently wrote an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post calling Israeli entrepreneurs to dig deeper into inland China, calling for them to bring the green menorah over to the other side of Great Wall. But I guess we are in New York – with its unique geopolitical status as the world’s financial, media and business center, also the largest Jewish and Chinese diaspora. We should think about what we can do here to better influence both China and Israel, help both sides to understand the culture and mentality of each other, highlight the possibility of collaboration, help people realize Israel is a catalyst that is able to spark drastic changes in global cleantech evolution with China. Such a combination surely will create something fresh, innovative, and beautiful – just like kosher Chinese food!”