Today, Israel carried out an airstrike against the China-Iran railway, marking the first direct attack on a key strategic asset of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Squeeze them for what? China isn’t the one bombing Israel, they’re Israel’s second biggest trade partner, they’re one of the only things keeping Israel afloat.
Might not be quite “biting the hand that feeds you” but definitely biting the hand of the assistant zookeeper that feeds you on weekends.
Because we are not countries? Consumption is not trade.
Also, this requires you to believe that China is playing both sides here which nakes no sense considering how important Iran is for China and how unimportant Israel is for them.
The “Boycott” part of BDS doesn’t just apply to consumers though, the bigger part is to pressure organizations and the state do boycott all economic activity with the Zionist entity, in the same way that countries cut off economic activity with South Africa.
The ideal goal isn’t just you the consumer not buying Sabra hummus from your local grocery store, it’s your grocery store not having it to sell you because your government has banned the import of Israeli products.
Trade IS support, in particular when it’s completely unnecessary. It’s one thing to buy crucial energy supplies or something like that, but Israel doesn’t produce anything important, just weapons. China gains little to nothing by having a relationship with Israel except another (small) market. Israel gains quite a lot by having a relationship with China, they get to purchase goods to improve the lives of their settler population.
Hell that’s exactly what sanctions are! Cutting off trade! And that’s the biggest goal of BDS!
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that China’s relationship with Israel is one of the worst things they do, and in general they are perfectly willing to do business with the worst criminals on earth and refuse to use their economic weight to push for anything except China making more money.
“Trade isn’t support” which is why BDS argues against cutting off economic activity with Israel, because that would be unnecessary and trade doesn’t help the entity at all!
BDS exists because trade is support.
There are different levels, obviously it’s not the same to buy necessary fuel from an enemy to heat your people’s homes as to buy blood diamonds. But Israel produces no crucial resources, and if China cut off all economic activity with them - Boycott them, divested from their businesses, and implemented sanctions - China wouldn’t even notice while it would hurt Israel significantly.
3rd. It goes US, Ireland, China. It’s even more stark if you take the EU as a bloc which then makes it EU, US, China.
Thats my bad, I’ve seen them cited as 2nd many times and haven’t gone and looked at the economics papers myself. Also wtf Ireland.
Mao quote
Sometimes Mao was wrong. Mao also famously sided with the United States against the USSR, and supported the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. His decision making on foreign policy was questionable to say the least.
China accounts for less than 15% of Israel’s goods imports when Hong Kong is included, and under 8% when HK is excluded which makes sense when analysing Chinese policy given Hong Kong’s ongoing reunification and special status given it’s history. China represents a marginal share of Israel’s external circulation, not a structural pillar.
The composition confirms this marginality. Chinese exports to Israel are consumer goods, machinery, and electric vehicles. Israeli exports to China are diamonds, optical equipment, and declining semiconductor shipments. None of this touches Israel’s core state capacities: intelligence, cyber warfare, military R&D, financial services. These sectors are integrated into US and EU capital circuits and protected by Washington’s security architecture. Meanwhile China actively undermines Israeli comparative advantages: lab grown diamonds have crashed the natural diamond market that Israel depends on, and Chinese technological advances render Israeli service exports increasingly obsolete.
Also treating Israel as an autonomous actor ignores its position as a subordinate node in US imperialist command. Any unilateral Chinese rupture would trigger coordinated reprisals from Washington, Brussels, Tokyo. More dangerously, it would likely accelerate imperialist backing for separatist forces targeting China: increased funding for ETIM, intensified DPP militarization, and expanded intelligence sharing with reactionary forces on China’s periphery. This is not speculation; it is the observed pattern of capitalist core discipline against any perceived deviation.
So long as the West secures Israel militarily and economically, symbolic sanctions have no material meaning. They only serve as a form of catharsis and moral posturing. They confuse form for content. The correct line is to utilize trade to develop productive forces, secure technological channels, and maintain strategic autonomy, while directing material support to the Axis of Resistance through separate circuits. This is not contradiction; it is dialectical coordination. Commercial engagement with a client state is not political endorsement when the broader anti imperialist front advances.
I await Israel’s historical dissolution and wish China could adopt a more militant posture. But the current approach rests on concrete analysis of concrete conditions, not moral abstraction. Sound strategy proceeds from the balance of forces, not from voluntarist gestures that cede ground to capital.
Sometimes Mao was wrong. Mao also famously sided with the United States against the USSR, and supported the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. His decision making on foreign policy was questionable to say the least.
While true in the broadest sense (70/30 etc etc). This account flattens a highly complex rupture. The Sino-Soviet split did not emerge simply from “Mao being wrong,” but from deep ideological, strategic, and state-to-state contradictions, especially Moscow’s increasingly paternal and subordinating posture toward Beijing, which sharpened tensions into an open break. It also ignores the substantial material and political support China gave Vietnam for years, particularly during the anti-imperialist struggle against the United States, and obscures the fact that some of the harshest and most distorted expressions of the anti-Soviet line in regional policy (such as the 1979 war) were developed and executed later, under Deng-era conditions, not simply under Mao himself. None of that means Mao was infallible, but it does mean the split and its consequences have to be understood as historically conditioned contradictions within the socialist camp, not reduced to an individualized story of irrational foreign-policy error.
Edit:
I forgot to mention I fully support BDS because its material strength lies in severing Israel from the imperial core’s reproduction networks. The movement functions by making institutional cooperation economically and politically untenable within the metropole, where financial integration, military supply chains, and diplomatic cover actually sustain the settler colonial apparatus. Applying that same tactic to China inverts the concrete conditions. Beijing’s commercial ties represent a marginal civilian fraction of Israel’s external circulation. Severing them would be simply performative moral purity while leaving imperialist command structures untouched. It would also most likely trigger coordinated capital redirection and systemic reprisals from Washington and its allied blocs, punishing Chinese strategic autonomy and hardening imperialist discipline. Different positions in the global division of labor require different methods of struggle. Backing mass boycotts in the core while the resistance and its support maintain calibrated trade channels reflects in my eyes a correct reading of where Israel actually draws its lifeblood.
Squeeze them for what? China isn’t the one bombing Israel, they’re Israel’s second biggest trade partner, they’re one of the only things keeping Israel afloat.
Might not be quite “biting the hand that feeds you” but definitely biting the hand of the assistant zookeeper that feeds you on weekends.
Presumably squeezing them to put pressure on Iran to make a deal, or even just tit-for-tat the closure of the Strait.
The only thing keeping Israel afloat right now that really matters is the supply of missile interceptors.
America is keeping their unsinkable carrier afloat by itself. Trade is not support.
Why is “Boycott” a part of BDS then? Trade is absolutely support
Because we are not countries? Consumption is not trade.
Also, this requires you to believe that China is playing both sides here which nakes no sense considering how important Iran is for China and how unimportant Israel is for them.
The “Boycott” part of BDS doesn’t just apply to consumers though, the bigger part is to pressure organizations and the state do boycott all economic activity with the Zionist entity, in the same way that countries cut off economic activity with South Africa.
The ideal goal isn’t just you the consumer not buying Sabra hummus from your local grocery store, it’s your grocery store not having it to sell you because your government has banned the import of Israeli products.
Trade IS support, in particular when it’s completely unnecessary. It’s one thing to buy crucial energy supplies or something like that, but Israel doesn’t produce anything important, just weapons. China gains little to nothing by having a relationship with Israel except another (small) market. Israel gains quite a lot by having a relationship with China, they get to purchase goods to improve the lives of their settler population.
Hell that’s exactly what sanctions are! Cutting off trade! And that’s the biggest goal of BDS!
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that China’s relationship with Israel is one of the worst things they do, and in general they are perfectly willing to do business with the worst criminals on earth and refuse to use their economic weight to push for anything except China making more money.
3rd. It goes US, Ireland, China. It’s even more stark if you take the EU as a bloc which then makes it EU, US, China.
No that would be Washington and Brussels and their billions in “aid” and massive diplomatic cover.
Also:
“Trade isn’t support” which is why BDS argues against cutting off economic activity with Israel, because that would be unnecessary and trade doesn’t help the entity at all!
BDS exists because trade is support.
There are different levels, obviously it’s not the same to buy necessary fuel from an enemy to heat your people’s homes as to buy blood diamonds. But Israel produces no crucial resources, and if China cut off all economic activity with them - Boycott them, divested from their businesses, and implemented sanctions - China wouldn’t even notice while it would hurt Israel significantly.
Thats my bad, I’ve seen them cited as 2nd many times and haven’t gone and looked at the economics papers myself. Also wtf Ireland.
Sometimes Mao was wrong. Mao also famously sided with the United States against the USSR, and supported the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. His decision making on foreign policy was questionable to say the least.
China accounts for less than 15% of Israel’s goods imports when Hong Kong is included, and under 8% when HK is excluded which makes sense when analysing Chinese policy given Hong Kong’s ongoing reunification and special status given it’s history. China represents a marginal share of Israel’s external circulation, not a structural pillar.
The composition confirms this marginality. Chinese exports to Israel are consumer goods, machinery, and electric vehicles. Israeli exports to China are diamonds, optical equipment, and declining semiconductor shipments. None of this touches Israel’s core state capacities: intelligence, cyber warfare, military R&D, financial services. These sectors are integrated into US and EU capital circuits and protected by Washington’s security architecture. Meanwhile China actively undermines Israeli comparative advantages: lab grown diamonds have crashed the natural diamond market that Israel depends on, and Chinese technological advances render Israeli service exports increasingly obsolete.
Also treating Israel as an autonomous actor ignores its position as a subordinate node in US imperialist command. Any unilateral Chinese rupture would trigger coordinated reprisals from Washington, Brussels, Tokyo. More dangerously, it would likely accelerate imperialist backing for separatist forces targeting China: increased funding for ETIM, intensified DPP militarization, and expanded intelligence sharing with reactionary forces on China’s periphery. This is not speculation; it is the observed pattern of capitalist core discipline against any perceived deviation.
So long as the West secures Israel militarily and economically, symbolic sanctions have no material meaning. They only serve as a form of catharsis and moral posturing. They confuse form for content. The correct line is to utilize trade to develop productive forces, secure technological channels, and maintain strategic autonomy, while directing material support to the Axis of Resistance through separate circuits. This is not contradiction; it is dialectical coordination. Commercial engagement with a client state is not political endorsement when the broader anti imperialist front advances.
I await Israel’s historical dissolution and wish China could adopt a more militant posture. But the current approach rests on concrete analysis of concrete conditions, not moral abstraction. Sound strategy proceeds from the balance of forces, not from voluntarist gestures that cede ground to capital.
While true in the broadest sense (70/30 etc etc). This account flattens a highly complex rupture. The Sino-Soviet split did not emerge simply from “Mao being wrong,” but from deep ideological, strategic, and state-to-state contradictions, especially Moscow’s increasingly paternal and subordinating posture toward Beijing, which sharpened tensions into an open break. It also ignores the substantial material and political support China gave Vietnam for years, particularly during the anti-imperialist struggle against the United States, and obscures the fact that some of the harshest and most distorted expressions of the anti-Soviet line in regional policy (such as the 1979 war) were developed and executed later, under Deng-era conditions, not simply under Mao himself. None of that means Mao was infallible, but it does mean the split and its consequences have to be understood as historically conditioned contradictions within the socialist camp, not reduced to an individualized story of irrational foreign-policy error.
Edit: I forgot to mention I fully support BDS because its material strength lies in severing Israel from the imperial core’s reproduction networks. The movement functions by making institutional cooperation economically and politically untenable within the metropole, where financial integration, military supply chains, and diplomatic cover actually sustain the settler colonial apparatus. Applying that same tactic to China inverts the concrete conditions. Beijing’s commercial ties represent a marginal civilian fraction of Israel’s external circulation. Severing them would be simply performative moral purity while leaving imperialist command structures untouched. It would also most likely trigger coordinated capital redirection and systemic reprisals from Washington and its allied blocs, punishing Chinese strategic autonomy and hardening imperialist discipline. Different positions in the global division of labor require different methods of struggle. Backing mass boycotts in the core while the resistance and its support maintain calibrated trade channels reflects in my eyes a correct reading of where Israel actually draws its lifeblood.