China, Palestine, Israel w/ Guy Burton
U.S.-CHINA PERCEPTION MONITOR, CARTER CENTRE
Forced Displacement of Gaza Strip Residents During the Gaza-Israel War 2023-2025.
It has been 541 days, almost a year and a half, since the Hamas-led attack on Israel. Since October 7th, 2023, 50,021 people have been killed (as of March 22nd, 2025), 15,613 of which were under 18 years old. Over 140,000 people have been displaced.
The Monitor spoke with Dr. Guy Burton to discuss how both China and the United States have responded to the war. The U.S.-China rivalry has been playing out in the Middle East for longer than the most recent Israel-Gaza war, but as Dr. Burton opines, the United States’ unwavering commitment to Israel amidst devastating death tolls and claims of war crimes puts China in a much better position. As Dr. Burton states, “China doesn’t have to do very much right now to present itself as a responsible great power because the Americans’ actions are making them look that way.”
The Monitor also asked Dr. Burton about China’s potential role as a mediator, United Nations Security Council votes, and Chinese public opinion of the war.
Guy Burton is a Visiting Fellow in the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation (SEPAD) Project at Lancaster University. He is the author of China and Middle East Conflicts (Routledge, 2020) and Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1947 Lexington, 2018). He has held teaching and research positions at the Brussels School of Governance, the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government in Dubai, Nottingham University’s Malaysian Campus, the University of Kurdistan-Hewler in Iraq and Birzeit University in Palestine.
Background
Nick Zeller: For readers who don’t know, could you give a brief background on China’s relationship with Israel and Palestine before the Hamas-led attack on October 7th, 2023?
Guy Burton: A lot of people assume that because China is a rising power, much of its relations to the wars in the Middle East are a recent phenomenon, but they aren’t. It’s had interactions with all the key actors there since the 1950s, but, obviously, in a different context. During the Cold War, it was in the shadow of the American and Soviet rivalry, and China was the junior partner to the Soviets. However, there was tension between the two socialist countries as well, and the Chinese were trying to find roots in the region. The United States and the Soviet Union were partnered with the countries in the region. If China wanted to make any kind of presence felt, it needed to interact with more insurgent groups, national liberation groups initially, like the Algerian nationalists, the FLN, and then the PLO in Palestine. In 1967, China saw the Arab-Israeli war of that year through the lens of the Cold War, through the lens of Israel as America’s ally and the Arabs as the Soviet’s. China, therefore, leaned towards the Arab side, and they supported the Palestinians.
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