Publications

In July 2024, then US Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, stated that Iran was stoking and funding the anti-Israel protests that were taking place in the United States, with the aim of sowing chaos and eroding trust in American democratic institutions. Iran, however, is not the only actor operating in this arena; China is also involved. However, a distinction should be made between Iranian and Chinese activity, particularly since Beijing maintains extensive diplomatic and economic relations with Israel (even though these diplomatic ties were strained during the Swords of Iron war with Gaza).

Chinese influence is manifested in four main ways. First, it occurs through reports in the state-run press, which is directly controlled by the Chinese government. Second, experts claim that China engages in covert influence operations, although China has never admitted to it. Third, the Chinese government indirectly influences Chinese social media by deciding whether to censor certain content. Fourth, regime supporters and affiliates operate against Israel in ways that seem to be independent from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), although their impact is relatively less significant.

One example of such influence is the network built by Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman residing in Shanghai, and his wife, Jodie Evans, one of the most prominent couples in the global radical left. Singham, who identifies ideologically with the Chinese Communist Party, stands at the center of a network of nonprofits, media outlets, and social media platforms that he funds. These organizations are linked together through financial ties and by the content they disseminate, often amplifying one another’s messaging and hosting joint events. Their messaging and events largely advance positions associated with Chinese propaganda bodies and, on several occasions, were even shared by official Chinese accounts. This network includes YouTube channels directly funded by Shanghai’s propaganda department, and two other YouTube channels collaborating with Chinese universities to promote China’s narratives worldwide. This extensive activity operates without disclosing the connection between the organizations, the Chinese Communist Party, and Singham, who, in July 2023, attended at least one workshop on advancing the Communist Party’s ideas globally. Singham also shares office space with a company to which he has donated at least $1.8 million, whose mission is “to educate foreigners about the miracles China brings to the world.” Employees of this company were filmed in Singham’s office, behind a sign that read “Always follow the Party.”

The connection to Israel: In recent years, organizations within Singham’s network have begun to criticize Israel harshly. Following the massacre of October 7, 2023, some of them planned and led anti-Israel demonstrations in the United States, including violent protests at Columbia University in New York, which attracted global attention. Members of these groups included Elias Rodriguez, who murdered Yaron Lishansky and Sarah Milgram, two Israeli embassy employees in Washington on May 22, 2025. The network groups’ new focus, shifting from promoting pro-Chinese propaganda to spreading anti-Israel propaganda, may be connected to an organization led by Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans. Evans is among the founders of Code Pink, known for its fierce criticism of and activism against Israel. Members of the group have stormed US House of Representatives hearings and pursued lawmakers who support Israel. In its early years, the organization was also known for being highly critical of China. However, since 2017, a quarter of its donations have come from organizations connected to Singham, the founder’s husband. Interestingly enough, with these donations, the criticism of China disappeared, and the organization even justified China’s actions against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It appears that the organizations operating under the Singham-Evans framework have adopted the narrative of their funders, whereby these organizations criticize Israel but avoid criticizing China.

Despite the prominence of Singham’s and Evans’s activities, their ties to China and the Chinese Communist Party are mainly ideological, and as far as is known, they are not directly operated by official entities. Therefore, stronger evidence of China’s official involvement in anti-Israel activity within the United States is the messaging conveyed by China itself—both openly, through official media outlets, and covertly, through cyber campaigns it conducts.

The criticism of Israel in the Chinese state media, especially in the party mouthpiece China Daily, has been particularly harsh. Among other things, the criticism has been used to attack the United States and to portray it as a kind of global villain sowing destruction and war in various regions of the world. An article published as early as October 23, 2023, before the Israeli military ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, argued that the United States was on the wrong side of history by supporting Israel, which was still reeling from the initial shock of Hamas’s attack. The article emphasized that while the world had to stop the war, the United States was prolonging it by assisting Israel.

Another article published in the China Daily in April 2024 noted only the number of Palestinian deaths, without any reference to Israeli casualties, and claimed that the United States was using Israel, and thus also the deaths of Gaza’s residents, to advance its own agendas. It further argued that neither Israel nor the United States truly cared about the Gazans or about the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The article employed two additional tactics: first, linking the war in Gaza with the war in Ukraine and asserting that the United States stokes wars for its own domestic political needs; and second, attempting to sow division within American society by claiming that support for Israel was an unpopular policy and symbolized a disconnect between the American people and their leaders. Such a statement, of course, can also harm Israel, as it depicts support for Israel as an interest of the ruling elites and an issue opposed by the general public.

China also exploited the wave of protests that swept across universities and liberal cities in the United States after October 7, 2023, especially as the war in Gaza intensified. Publications in the China Daily and on platforms affiliated with the Chinese military portrayed the anti-Israel protesters as calm and peaceful, demonstrating against their government for going against the will of the people, in contrast to the American police and authorities, who were depicted as violent and repressive, infringing upon the freedom of expression. In some cases, pro-Israel demonstrators were themselves depicted as violent. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson even accused the United States of double standards - on the one hand, repressing protests and on the other, condemning other countries for doing so - an unmistakable reference to the Tiananmen Square protests.

Posts on heavily censored social media in China were even more blatant, and at times antisemitic, claiming that Israel controls the United States and drawing comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. Some referred to Israel as a “terrorist organization,” while describing Hamas as a resistance organization and spreading unfounded conspiracy theories. These and similar posts raised concern in the US State Department, which claimed that China was promoting conspiracy theories and antisemitism within the US, particularly regarding supposed Jewish control of finance, politics, and the media. Israel also expressed alarm, with the Israeli embassy in China accusing a subsidiary of CCTV, the state broadcaster, of similar actions. As in any country, social media posts by private individuals are usually not state-initiated but rather spontaneous expressions of citizens. However, in the case of China, social media is tightly monitored, and it must be assumed that if the Chinese government wished to eliminate such narratives, it could do so. Despite official claims that the regime had censored such content, its relatively wide distribution on Chinese social media raises doubts about its willingness to seriously address the issue.

Alongside its overt activities, China also conducts covert influence operations for which it avoids taking responsibility. These influence efforts focus, at least in part, on Israel’s image in the United States and on the relations between the two countries. The research group Graphika revealed that China, through social media accounts operated by actors affiliated with it, sought to sow division within the United States, in part by amplifying the discourse about the Israel–Hamas war and criticism of the handling of the issue by the Biden administration at the time. The leading narratives appealed both to reason, that the United States was fueling the war, and to emotion, that the US remained silent and continued to support Israel in the face of the suffering of Gaza’s population. According to Microsoft, and consistent with official publications, China exploited the protests against Israel to stir up disputes within the United States, including on the internet and in covert ways. Research by Taiwan AI Labs, a non-governmental organization that studies the use of artificial intelligence and foreign influence operations, mainly Chinese, revealed that a troll network distributing malicious content about Israel was established even before October 7. It spread negative narratives about Israel, and its activity intensified after the Hamas massacre. The network widely disseminated critical articles about Israel published in China’s official media, and its behavioral patterns raised suspicions that it was linked to Chinese entities.

Because involvement in such activities can be denied, it also provides fertile ground for blatant antisemitism. Cyber campaigns, which researchers and the US Department of Justice claimed were directly connected to state bodies in China, spread antisemitic messages to American audience about supposed Jewish and Israeli control of American politics. This was done, among other things, to stoke tensions ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Alongside this general campaign, the network also created campaigns targeting specific candidates, including Barry Moore of Alabama, who is not Jewish but is considered a strong supporter of Israel and a critic of China, and Marco Rubio, currently the US secretary of state. In Moore’s case, the campaign employed antisemitic language, exploiting his support for Israel to attack him.

From the above, it is evident that China and its proxies play a significant role in the current wave of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the United States, even if they are not the primary drivers fueling it. At the same time, it is important to note that China does not promote anti-Israel narratives in order to harm Israel directly, but rather it seeks to harm the United States. In this context, Israel is used as a tool to advance Beijing’s claim that Washington destabilizes both the international system and the regions where it operates. For this reason, the State of Israel should engage in open dialogue with its Chinese counterparts. Even if China’s intention is to weaken the US position, Israel still suffers collateral damage, while China’s slide into antisemitism could also endanger Jewish communities in the diaspora. China has stressed the value it places on its ties with Israel, as noted by its representatives on various occasions and by the continuation of its commercial and diplomatic presence in Israel throughout the war. Therefore, it should be expected that China’s interlocutors will also be willing to cooperate with Israel in efforts to mitigate the damage caused by the confrontation between China and the United States.