By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-09-29 06:23:01 | Updated at 2024-09-30 05:23:13
23 hours ago
A Chinese diplomat beams with satisfaction as an unlikely world leader smiles while leafing through a book dedicated to Xi Jinping Thought, plucked from a box on the desk that separates the pair.
The remarkable photo was taken a little over a year ago, in July 2023. The leader is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the diplomat is Cai Run, at that time the Chinese ambassador in Tel Aviv.
It was taken at a moment of relative stability in bilateral relations: Cai was brokering a visit to Beijing by Netanyahu that would have been designed to send a message to US President Joe Biden at a point when his relations with the Israeli government had come under strain.
Around about the same time, in a previously unreported effort to curry favour in Beijing, Netanyahu had sent a copy of his own memoir – Bibi: My Story – to the Chinese leader.
“If the war hadn’t happened, if October 7 [the Hamas attack on Israel] hadn’t happened, the massacre and the invasion that we’re in, then remember that Netanyahu would have visited China,” said Tuvia Gering, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council specialising in relations between China and Israel.
