Chinese Ambassador to Israel Xiao Junzheng has been on a charm offensive since arriving to his new post in December. In contrast with his predecessors, who shied away from the Israeli media, Xiao has been blanketing the airwaves and acting in ways unprecedented for Beijing: condemning Hamas and calling to free the hostages. 

The ambassador’s personal outreach comes in sharp contrast to the declining relations between Beijing and Jerusalem since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. But now, China is seemingly trying to turn the clock back to a time when it was making major investments in Israel and inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Beijing. 

Israel’s response has been inconsistent, and the Trump administration hasn’t yet raised any public objections to the outreach.

Israel’s relations with China took a nosedive after Oct. 7, with China publicly taking Hamas’ side. After the massacres of Israeli civilians, China refused to mention — let alone condemn — Hamas, speaking on Oct. 8 of “the escalation of tensions between Palestine and Israel” and accusing the U.S. of “fanning the flames.” Last summer, China hosted Hamas leaders and pressured the Palestinian Authority to bring the terrorist group into the fold. Beijing even called Iran’s missile attack against Israel last April an act of “self defense.” 

Jerusalem reacted to the hostility from Beijing by expressing “deep disappointment” in China’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks; soon after, Israel signed a statement condemning its human rights violations against Uighur Muslims. A Knesset delegation, which included a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, visited Taiwan and met with its president; the delegation’s leader, opposition lawmaker Boaz Toporovsky, said Israel and Taiwan are alike in that they are “small but strong democracies in a harsh environment.” 

Yet a year after the attacks and after Israel killed much of Hezbollah and Hamas’ leadership, Beijing made a subtle shift and started to speak about Israel’s “legitimate security concerns.” 

According to Carice Witte, founder and executive director of SIGNAL Group, a think tank specializing in Israel-China relations, Beijing no longer viewed Israel as a regional superpower after the Oct. 7 attacks, but “after Israel’s incredible military and intelligence successes in the fall of 2024 that rewrote the narratives of Lebanon and Syria, Beijing began to change its tune — becoming less anti-Israel and less pro-Iran.”

Soon after his arrival in Tel Aviv in December, Xiao sprang into action. He praised Israeli tech companies in an interview with Israeli financial paper Calcalist. On ILTV last month, he gave the first unambiguous condemnation from China of the Oct. 7 attacks and even wore a yellow ribbon calling to bring back the hostages. 

Xiao wrote several op-eds for The Jerusalem Post, including one touting “peaceful reunification” of China and Taiwan and another hailing the benefits to Israel of the private port in Haifa, built and controlled by a Chinese company. He claimed “there has never been antisemitism in China,” despite ongoing evidence to the contrary. On Yom HaShoah, he wrote in Israel Hayom about a Chinese diplomat honored by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations.” 

Witte told Jewish Insider that Xiao visited SIGNAL offices within weeks of his arrival. He spoke English rather than using a translator, told Witte and SIGNAL staff to call him by his first name and acknowledged that he “has his work cut out to improve relations with Israel.” 

Xiao likely received “a directive from the leadership [of China] to engage with Israel in positive ways,” Witte surmised.

At the same time, China-Israel relations have generally been business oriented, with Beijing aligning with the Palestinians on conflict-related matters even before Oct. 7. 

The U.S. has long raised the alarm about Israel allowing Chinese companies to work on major infrastructure projects, the most prominent of which is a second Haifa Port, which Chinese company SIPG began operating in 2021. The issue was arguably the greatest cause of tension between the first Trump administration and the Israeli government. In response, Israel bolstered its oversight of foreign investments, but the first Trump administration and the Biden administration still expressed concerns.

Now, with the war in Gaza, U.S. negotiations with Iran and other developments in the region, the second Trump administration is giving less attention to Israel-China ties, in part, an administration official told JI, because there aren’t many new investments.

Still, there is at least one deal with a Chinese company that the Israeli Finance Ministry felt comfortable pursuing during the current Trump presidency. After Polish company PESA pulled out of supplying train cars for the Jerusalem light rail last year, amid perceived increased risk due to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli construction company Denya Cebus entered a $383 million contract to purchase 132 train cars from Chinese state-owned manufacturer CRRC. 

CRRC was able to sell the train cars to Israel even though the Jerusalem light rail travels over the Green Line to parts of Jerusalem that China does not consider part of Israel. Witte posited that the contract is likely part of Beijing’s “mission … to improve relations” with Israel.

The Department of Defense put CRRC on a blacklist this year of companies affiliated with China’s military. Multiple Israeli news outlets reported in April that the Israeli National Security Council tried to block the sale from going through on the grounds that it would hurt U.S.-Israel relations. The accountant-general of the Israeli Finance Ministry, Yali Rothenberg, reportedly pushed it forward because CRRC offered the best price, amid concerns that canceling the contract could expose Israel to a massive lawsuit.

The U.S. never officially expressed opposition to the purchase, though the Biden administration had voiced concern to Israel about Chinese involvement in the light rail. American officials dropped the matter last month after a meeting with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who explained that the contract had been signed years ago, the train cars would come from a CRRC subsidiary based in Massachusetts and that a private company was purchasing the trains, not the Israeli government. 

The Israeli Finance Ministry declined to comment on the matter, first reported by Calcalist, but multiple sources involved in the events confirmed them to JI on condition of anonymity.

Michael Granoff, founder of Maniv, a venture capital firm focused on transportation, told JI that “Israel’s government and public are both well behind the U.S. in understanding the risks associated with Chinese technology. The Biden administration, in its final week … outright barred Chinese EVs because of the security vulnerabilities they represent. In Israel, with no discernible government investigation, these cars have rapidly become best-sellers, and only recently have some in the military begun to restrict them from some sensitive locations.”

In addition, in March, the Israeli government announced deregulation reforms for its ports in Haifa and Ashdod, which were meant to increase efficiency, but in effect would double the capacity of the private Bay Port in Haifa, operated by China.  

And as the U.S. and EU ban Chinese cars, they have become extremely popular in Israel, where their share of the market is the highest in the developed world. Over a quarter of all new cars and 92% of plug-in hybrid cars delivered to Israel in the first quarter of 2025 were Chinese. The spike in purchases of Chinese cars came even as the IDF would not lease Chinese vehicles for its senior officers, saying that the cars did not meet security standards. 

Michael Granoff, founder of Maniv, a venture capital firm focused on transportation, told JI that “Israel’s government and public are both well behind the U.S. in understanding the risks associated with Chinese technology. The Biden administration, in its final week … outright barred Chinese EVs because of the security vulnerabilities they represent. In Israel, with no discernible government investigation, these cars have rapidly become best-sellers, and only recently have some in the military begun to restrict them from some sensitive locations.”

Granoff lamented Jerusalem’s “utter negligence” in allowing “vehicles that transmit incalculable volumes of data to a totalitarian regime allied with many of our enemies to become ubiquitous on our roads without consideration for the vulnerabilities they represent.”

He warned that the Trump administration is unlikely to tolerate increased entanglements between Israel and China.

“Despite the massive differences between the Biden and Trump administrations, their outlook on China is strikingly similar,” Granoff said. “Both understood that China is a totalitarian state that undermines human rights and that seeks to overtake the United States as the world’s leading economic and military superpower.”

Granoff noted that it would be impractical for the U.S. or Israel to disentangle completely from China, but the governments need to recognize the risks. “Israel must avoid being … captured” and put in a situation where it can only use Chinese companies for its needs, he said.

Ruth Pines-Feldman, a research fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security, similarly pointed out that the Trump and Biden administrations both viewed China as the main threat to the U.S. She said that President Donald Trump’s recent visit to the Middle East was meant to push back against China’s growing ties with American allies in the region, and as such, “we may see the Trump administration pressure Israel to stop cooperation with China.” (Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov is also a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute.)

“They clearly don’t like cooperation between Israel and China, but Israel, as a small and threatened country, did the right thing to keep up relations not only with the U.S. but with the other rising power in the world,” she added, and said the U.S. was right not to pressure Israel to cancel its contract with CRRC.

“In China, the situation for Israel is still not good,” said Carice Witte, founder and executive director of SIGNAL Group, a think tank specializing in Israel-China relations. “The anti-Israel propaganda pushed into social media created a high level of anti-Israel sentiment that could take years to change. At the same time Beijing will continue to be hard on Israel to differentiate itself from the U.S. and generally try to create difficulties for the U.S. It will also take a hard stance on Israel to curry favor with the Global South countries. They provide the votes in the U.N. that help China reshape global governance in its favor.”

Still, Pines-Feldman said that Israel needs to continue with its system of extra oversight for foreign companies working in major infrastructure projects in order to ensure that Israeli interests, including relations with the U.S., aren’t harmed. She also pointed to concerns about China’s close relations with Russia and Iran as a reason to be cautious. 

“We need to be careful about this and continue our special supervision mechanism, but it would not be good to cut off ties. We need to find a balance,” she said. Israel “has to know how to handle both powers and use the competition between them for our own good. That’s the political game.”

Despite Xiao’s overtures to Israelis and continued business ties between Israel and China, Witte warned that “in China, the situation for Israel is still not good. The anti-Israel propaganda pushed into social media created a high level of anti-Israel sentiment that could take years to change. At the same time Beijing will continue to be hard on Israel to differentiate itself from the U.S. and generally try to create difficulties for the U.S. It will also take a hard stance on Israel to curry favor with the Global South countries. They provide the votes in the U.N. that help China reshape global governance in its favor.”

Witte also posited that Beijing is trying to improve relations with Jerusalem so that Israel does not try to block Chinese involvement in reconstruction projects in Syria and Lebanon. “If Israel supports any Chinese companies, that should come with reciprocity,” she stated.

Witte said that “China’s charm offensive will only be a problem for the U.S. if it leads to Israel selling new and emerging technologies to China or in other ways supports China’s aim to lead in cutting edge technologies.”

“It would also be a problem if Israel inadvertently fails to ensure its own interests in the face of China’s new approach,” she added.