Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Israel

By John Gee

The transformation that has taken place over the past 20 years in China’s attitude toward Israel was confirmed when President Jiang Zemin visited that one-time “base of imperialism” from April 12 to 18. No previous Chinese head of state had been there and the visit was rightly seen, in Israel and elsewhere, as a landmark in the development of Israel’s ties with the rest of the world.

Diplomatic relations between the two states were established in January 1992. The expansion of high-level political contacts has gone on apace over the past two years. Yitzhak Mordechai visited China as Israel’s defense minister in 1998 and his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Chi Haotian, returned the visit a year later, in October 1999. Li Peng, chairman of the National People’s Congress, went to Israel in November 1999. Jiang Zemin’s recent visit follows Israeli President Ezer Weizman’s trip to China last year.

The two presidents met on Jiang Zemin’s first day in Israel. Jiang told Weizman that he was a great admirer of the Jews and that he esteemed the long line of intellectuals they had produced, starting with Albert Einstein. Significantly, he didn’t trace that long line back to Karl Marx, the Jewish intellectual upon whose thinking the party of which Jiang is a prominent member still claims to base its own political principles.

It was a telling oversight and undoubtedly deliberate. China wants Israeli technology and Israel sees in China a large market for its products. This is what has brought them together, rather than any shared political outlook. For most of the past 20 years, China was chiefly interested in Israeli military technology and Israel became its second largest foreign source of arms. The latest military deal between the two states was the subject of much publicity during Jiang’s visit.

The U.S. had already made known its objections to Israel’s planned sale of a sophisticated airborne surveillance system to China (see Jan./Feb. 2000 Washington Report). The tenor and content of a number of U.S. and Israeli press reports suggested that the respective governments were playing out their dispute, in part, through friendly journalists, before and during Jiang’s trip.

The U.S. wants Israel to cancel the deal, saying that the aircraft will strengthen China’s ability to attack Taiwan. The Pentagon asserts that the surveillance system is based upon technology obtained from the U.S. Israel denies the U.S. claims. The Israeli government responds that, had Britain or France won the Chinese contract (for which both tendered), they would not have faced the same U.S. pressure, but because of the substantial military and economic aid that it provides to Israel, the U.S. has assumed that it has a right to scuttle Israeli military projects (such as the Lavi fighter) and arms deals it dislikes. Complain as Israel might, commentators think that it will have to accede to American wishes on this issue if the latter is absolutely insistent that it do so (which, incidentally, suggests what Washington could have done in support of the Palestinians’ rights if the will had been there).

China wants Israeli technology and Israel sees in China a large market.

The issue was raised between Jiang Zemin and his Israeli hosts during the Chinese president’s visit, but no indication was given at its end that they had agreed upon a new response to the U.S. Israel officially remained committed to delivering the first plane to China this summer and letting it exercise its option to order up to six more. However, some face-saving compromise will no doubt be found, if it hasn’t been already. Ze’ev Schiff, the well-informed military correspondent of the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, wrote on April 12:

“Barak has come to an agreement with American Secretary of Defense William Cohen that his undersecretary for policy, Walter Slocombe, and the Israeli defense ministry’s director-general, Amos Yaron, will try to find a formula that will draw Israel out of the Chinese quagmire. The formula will undoubtedly allow for a partial arms deal with the Chinese.”

This could allow the sale of the first plane to go ahead, but restrict follow-up sales. Israel could save face by not being seen to back down in the face of U.S. pressure and China could do so by (apparently of its own volition) not exercising its option on all of the six planes it is contractually allowed to order. The fly in the ointment, as far as Israel is concerned, is that Washington remains wary even of this more limited deal, maintaining that China is capable of copying the technology used in the first plane. If the U.S. remains adamant in opposing the supply of even one of these planes to China, Israel's alternative could be to offer to supply other arms instead—although that would enrage the Chinese.

During Jiang’s visit, agreements on cooperation in education and technological research were signed. The Chinese president went to kibbutzim in the Negev, reflecting China’s interest in Israeli techniques of making efficient use of water in arid areas, and he also visited Comverse Technology and ECI Telecom, Israeli hi-tech companies which already do around $100 million of business with China every year.

Egypt and the PNA

Jiang made brief visits to Egypt and the areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority during his trip to Israel. He met PNA President Yasser Arafat in Bethlehem on April 15 and, at a press conference that day, re-affirmed the official Chinese position that a Palestinian-Israeli peace should be based upon U.N. resolutions which stipulate that Israel must withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967. He said that China would support the Palestinians “in all international forums and in the United Nations.”

Jiang also addressed a session of the Palestinian Legislative Council, specially convened in Bethlehem. Referring to the longstanding friendship between China and the PLO, he said:

“We would like to reassert that our support for the just cause of the Palestinian people is a permanent policy of China.” He also welcomed progress toward Palestinian statehood, but studiously avoided making remarks on the fundamental issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian right of return.

Jiang and Arafat signed an agreement on economic cooperation and Jiang pledged $3.2 million from China for the construction of a 100-bed hospital in Qalqilya, in the northern West Bank. Jiang did not respond publicly to Arafat’s request that China appoint a representative to the region to monitor the peace process, with functions similar to those of the European Union’s envoy, Miguel Moratinos.

Singapore Debates Madrassas

An apparently common-sense proposal about education for young children has sparked arguments about the future of Singapore’s madrassas (Muslim religious schools).

Although the great majority of children in Singapore attend school, they are not obliged to do so by law. On Oct. 13 last year, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong proposed in parliament that education should be made compulsory for the first four grades (Primary 1 to 4). He said that this would give all Singaporean children the same start in life. The proposal is consistent with Singapore’s attempts to improve the level of skills of its population. It would mean that those young people who would previously have entered the labor market without any skills will at least have a basic education in the future.

To most Singaporeans, the proposal seemed sensible and uncontroversial but it has aroused worries among many Muslims, who are mostly Malays.

They feared that the introduction of compulsory education would mean the enforcement of a national curriculum which would squeeze out the teaching of Islam and Arabic and could lead to the closure of madrassas. It is from among those who have studied at madrassas that the Islamic scholars, schoolteachers and Muslim community officials are drawn.

There are six madrassas in Singapore, with 4,000 full-time students in all. They suffer from academic under-performance and a high dropout rate: 65 percent of the students leave without completing Secondary 4 (the level for 16-year-olds). Some non-Muslims interpret this as a sign of the irrelevance of madrassa education and of its inferior quality, but this is unfair.

Singapore has a high-pressure education system, which pushes children to study hard, to achieve high marks and to handle large amounts of homework. Not wanting Muslim students to be at a disadvantage, the madrassas try to give them as much instruction as they can in “mainstream subjects” as well as a sound education in Islam. A few cope well and excel, but for many, the sheer volume of work they are expected to undertake is too much.

Those concerned by the proposals which are under debate think that they imply either that Muslim children will be obliged to attend national schools for the first four to six years of their formal education or that the madrassas will be compelled to adopt a national curriculum, which will leave no time for religious instruction and Arabic lessons. In the first case in particular, some Muslims believe that the madrassas could wither away, as many parents might feel reluctant to transfer their children to madrassas if they are doing well in the national system.

The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS), which has a warm relationship with the government, has submitted proposals about the madrassas to the committee which is studying the introduction of compulsory education. They include suggestions that Islamic Religious Knowledge should be offered in national schools and Arabic be made an “O”-level subject. Enrichment classes in Islam might be given after normal school hours. MUIS proposed a revised curriculum for the madrassas, incorporating the subjects that the Education Ministry required.

Pergas, the association of Islamic scholars and teachers, was more critical toward the government proposals. In a press statement issued on March 31, it said that they were more concerned with compulsory schooling than compulsory education. It explained its conviction that an Islamic education developed good people who were more than just good citizens. Implicitly, this went against the thinking of many non-Muslim Singaporeans, who tend to see education that is not geared to securing a career as wasted.

The Pergas statement said: “We cannot agree to any government justification for ‘forced schooling’ of all children in national schools only. To consent to this is tantamount to conceding that madrassa primary schooling is not education in its own right.”

The association later made it clear that it did not accept MUIS’s suggestions. Nevertheless, Pergas indicated its willingness to see madrassas incorporate important aspects of any compulsory national education proposal and planned to draw up its own proposals for the future operation of the madrassas.

In spite of the strong feelings the issue has aroused, there is a common desire to avoid confrontation, and when the report of the committee on compulsory education is eventually presented it will probably reflect a conciliatory attitude toward Muslim concerns.

Indonesia Probes Suharto Kin

In April, at long last, the Indonesian government began moves to seize assets belonging to former President Suharto. He is accused of corruption and abuse of power during the 32 years in which he ruled Indonesia. His family is also being investigated and Suharto’s eldest daughter, Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, and Suharto’s son, Bambang Trihatmodjo, were questioned about their role as treasurers of two charitable foundations. Suharto’s wife, Madam Tien, who died a few years ago, was nicknamed “Madam Tien percent” by some, after the rake-off she was alleged to have taken from various government-approved deals.

Suharto has been placed under “city arrest” and banned from traveling overseas for a year while investigations continue. He tried the patience of the attorney general’s office by failing to respond to three summons to appear there and was then questioned at home. Although he suffered a mild stroke last year, there is some skepticism about the seriousness of his illness. He could be suffering from “Pinochetitis,” an affliction which strikes former dictators when they are called to account for their past misdeeds.

Gus Dur under Fire

Radical Muslim groups demonstrated in Jakarta on April 7 and 8. On the first day, 5,000 turned out to proclaim their support for a holy war against Christians in Maluku province. They criticized alleged government inaction and threatened that they would go to fight against what they portrayed as a Christian secessionist movement.

In reality, the government has been attempting to damp down the conflict, with some success. It has used troops to quell inter-communal conflict and has excluded outsiders who it believed were going to the Maluku area to stoke up hostilities. While Muslim groups in Indonesia tend to look on the Maluku conflict as one between aggressive Christians and innocent Muslims, some Christians in the outside world see it as an example of the suffering of Christians in a predominantly Muslim state.

The truth is that the struggle is a vicious inter-communal fight, partly resulting from the Suharto government’s policy of encouraging “transmigration” from Muslim Java to less crowded parts of Indonesia. This policy led to local resentments between Christians and Muslims in Kalimantan. During the past 16 months, about 2,500 people have been killed in the clashes. Human rights groups say that the numbers of Christians and Muslims in this grim tally are roughly equal.

On April 8, about 2,000 persons marched to the presidential palace in Jakarta to protest against President Abdurrahman Wahid’s proposal that the official ban on communism in Indonesia should be lifted. Gus Dur, as the president is popularly known, made his call in March. He also said that he would support an official investigation into the massacre of alleged communists in 1965, when, following an attempted coup, over half a million people were massacred and 600,000 held without trial. The army seized power and President Sukarno was shunted aside by Suharto. The Communist Party of Indonesia was banned, as was the teaching of Marxism and the possession of Marxist works. Some Muslim organizations say that communism should remain banned because it is atheistic, but Gus Dur has said that the Indonesian constitution does not bar any belief and a continued ban is contrary to democracy and human rights.

The marchers linked their opposition to lifting the ban on communism to their rejection of the government’s efforts to increase ties with Israel. They burned two Israeli flags as well as communist red banners.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: Israel and the Palestinians, available through the AET Book Club.