On 29 May 2025, Ambassador Xiao Junzheng attended the 9th Annual Conference on Israel’s China Policy held by the Sino-Israel Global Network & Academic Leadership (SIGNAL) and addressed the audience. The full text of his remarks is as follows:
Executive Director Carice Witte,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
Good evening! It gives me great pleasure to attend SIGNAL Group’s 9th Annual Conference. I wish to extend my appreciation to SIGNAL and Carice for their enduring commitment to China-Israel friendly exchanges and cooperation.
Over the past six months since my arrival in Israel, I have been deeply impressed by the tremendous vitality and the many marvels achieved by this small country, which really ignited my curiosity. At the same time, I realized that Israel, facing a unique geopolitical environment, often feels it has no room to retreat when dealing with complex situations, leaving it with no choice but to go all in and sometimes even take desperate risks. It leaves me with a question mark: Could Israel find a way out of the predicament by accommodating the interests of all relevant parties and reaching consensus through negotiation?
Exploration for the future and contemplation in times of challenges are the most immediate impressions I have of Israel. How we perceive Israel determines how we perceive and develop our relationship with it. The three Global Initiatives proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping provide us with important inspiration:
The Global Development Initiative calls for a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, where development outcomes will be shared among different countries and across social classes. Innovation cooperation is the most crucial driving force for China and Israel to jointly achieve that goal. China has evolved from the world’s factory to a global innovation hub. We took the lead in AI, quantum computing, clean energy, aviation and aerospace. Meanwhile, Israel is transitioning from a world-renowned “startup nation” to a “scale-up powerhouse”. Innovation development highly relies on mobility and aggregation of global capital and professionals. Only openness and cooperation can ride the wave of the times. Setting limits, in essence, are self-imposed constraint. Israel is gifted at making breakthroughs from 0 to 1, while China is better at scaling up from 1 to 100. By combining Israel’s innovation momentum with China’s scale advantages, we can tap into boundless development potential. Our two countries have yielded fruitful outcomes through innovation cooperation in various fields such as agriculture, environment protection and medical services. Looking ahead, we need to broaden our innovation cooperation across a wider range of areas.
The Global Security Initiative calls for common security realized through dialogue and cooperation. Time and again, history proves that there is no such thing as “absolute security” or “exclusive security”, because no country can seek its own security at the expense of others. The Palestinian question is at the core of the Middle East issue. It’s an inevitable question for Israel to realize enduring peace and stability. Having endured both conflict and calm, Israel understands better than many other countries that war comes with risks and that peace comes at a cost. There are diverse voices across the Israeli society on how to resolve the Palestinian question. The Chinese side supports the two-State solution which is also an international consensus. It is unlikely to truly break the cycle of violence, if the inter-generational transmission of hatred cannot be prevented. We sincerely hope that Israel and Palestine will coexist peacefully and the Arab people and the Jewish people will live in harmony. We respect Israel’s right to subsistence and development. We welcome normalization of relations between Israel and other countries in the region. Israel has demonstrated political courage in the face of challenges; what the world also expects now is its political wisdom.
The Global Civilization Initiative calls for inclusiveness and mutual learning among civilizations. The Middle East is both the cradle of numerous civilizations, including Jewish, Arab, and Persian, and a bridge connecting diverse cultures worldwide. I witnessed how Jews, Arabs, Druze, Christians, Muslims, and others live together harmoniously in places like Haifa, Acre, and Carmel and how they take pride in this coexistence. The Chinese culture pursues harmony without uniformity and opposes hate speech and behaviors targeting any specific ethnicity or region, including those related to antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Asian sentiment. There is no fertile ground for antisemitism in China. The Chinese government never allows the existence and spread of antisemitism. Our two peoples share a bond spanning a millennium. The Chinese people extended a helping hand, for many times, to the Jewish people in their time of great hardship——this will be the theme presented during the exhibitions to be held in Israel by Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum. Besides, Jewish fighter Jakob Rosenfeld stood with the Chinese people against Japanese aggression during World War II. Later this year, an event will be held at the Israeli Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II to narrate Rosenfeld’s remarkable life story. Apart from remembering the history, we are also ready to embrace the future. We hope to see increasingly vibrant people-to-people exchanges between China and Israel, in particular among think tanks, youth, and in the field of culture and sports.
Thank you.