China, General Overview
M. Avrum Ehrlich

Migration Routes and Ethnic Backgrounds: Various waves of immigration, first Persian Jewish traders over the silk road, the Baghdadi traders of the 1800s, the Russians of the 1920s, the German and Europeans of the 1930s and 40s. Then most Jews left for the U.S, Canada, Australia, UK and Israel creating a diverse Diaspora of Chinese Jews, many of them succeeding and building business empires or successful careers and putting down networks and connections based on their Jewish heritage and their Chinese experiences. Most recently the immigration of Jews back to China is based on China’s growing economy.
Languages Spoken: English, Russian, Kavkavi, Hebrew, French, Chinese

Historical Overview
Since the 2nd Century BCE there have been unverified myths and assumptions regarding Jewish merchants entering China at different times and various routes.
960-1127 (Northern Song Dynasty) Jewish merchants - presumably of Persian origin - passed over the Silk Road into China and began a settlement in Kaifeng, which was, at the time, the Chinese capital. This was the earliest clear documentation of Jews in China. Some came by sea, and gradually penetrated from Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces to the mainland; Some came by land along Persia and India on the Silk Road. The emperor himself gave the earliest Jewish immigrants Chinese names such as Gao, Li, An, Mu, Zhao, Jin, Zhou, Bai and so on. The ancient Chinese history books called them “shushu”,”deya” and “youtai”, and their religion was called “you tai jiao”. They and the Han people lived together and used their Chinese family names. Some Jews seem to have converted or lived as Muslims, becoming part of the Hui nationality of minority Chinese Muslims. Jews were also known by the Han majority as ‘blue capped Muslims’ indicating the Han was not able to easily tell the two groups apart. It is possible that an unknown number of Chinese Jews continued to exist in the shadow of a larger Muslim minority, eating ritually slaughtered meat, avoiding pork, celebrating festivals and the Sabbath, as Muslims. The Jews of Kaifeng had an eight hundred year intact history until around 1840 when religious activity stopped as a result of a series of fires and floods. The community is reestablishing itself as described later.
1163 Synagogue established in Kaifeng.
1489 Stone tablet erected at the Kaifeng synagogue, the earliest existing self-document of the Chinese Jews.
1605 Ai Tian, Kaifeng Jew and holder of the Chinese official title of juren, meets Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci in Beijing. This encounter brings news of the existence of Chinese Jews to both European Jews and Christians.
1800s New waves of Jewish immigration came to China. The first group were mainly Baghdadi Jewish business men representing their families or seeking new trade horizons thru the European trading companies in Asia. Baghdadi Jews begin to settle in Shanghai, one of the Treaty Ports that were established as a result of the first Opium War which ended six years earlier. They went to Shanghai, Hong Kong as well as India, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan. Many became very wealthy and successful, buying huge tracts of land in what is now the centers of Shanghai and Hong Kong and others contributed in other ways leaving a unique mark of distinction wherever they were. Shanghai business was mainly in trade. The Hong Kong Jews were engaged in finance and banking.
1850s After years of decline and repeated floods, disasters and reconstructions, the Kaifeng synagogue falls to its final destruction. This also marks the disintegration of the community as such. Yet Jewish identity persists in various forms ever since.
1899 First Russian Jews settle in Harbin, North-Eastern China, creating a fast growing community and reaching its peak with 13,000 people in 1931.
1900 Shanghai Jews found The Shanghai Society for the Rescue of Chinese Jews, with little results.
----- Ohel Leah synagogue consecrated in Hong Kong.
1905 the Russo-Japanese War many Jews opted to remain in Japanese and ultimately Chinese territory. Jewish businesses and corporations were very successful in Harbin.
1910 Canadian Anglican Bishop William Charles White establishes the Henan Diocese in Kaifeng. During his 25 year mission he acquired the land of the former synagogue and the stone steles. He was also involved in a Christian attempt “to re-organize the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng” which was a euphemism for converting them to Christianity.
1920 A surge in the number of Russian Jews relocated to the northern Chinese city of Harbin – which was at the time occupied by Russia – burgeoned its population to 13000 Jews. Gradually some moved on to places like Dalian, Tianjin, Qufu, Qingdao in Shandong province and many moved to Shanghai. Ohel Rachel synagogue was established in Shanghai marking the peak of the Baghdadi community in Shanghai. Russian Jewish immigrants establish the Shanghai Ashkenazi community. The Zionist program was publicly supported by Sun Yatsen whose eagerness to support what he termed “the civilization of the world” helped to lay the foundations for a fruitful relationship with China, through which numerous political milestones would later be achieved.
1929, Harbin reaches the peak of Jewish immigration and Jews begin to seek other places to immigrate to from the U.S, Canada, Australia and Israel.
1938-1940 Some 20,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe find safe haven in Shanghai, including the entire Mir Yeshiva. This miraculous story evolved to serve as a symbol of friendship between Jews and China much quoted by diplomats and politicians, especially regarding Sino-Israeli relations. There were ultimately about forty to fifty thousand Jews living in China. The number of Jews living in Shanghai was about thirty thousand souls.
After 1945, especially after 1949, the Jews began to leave China and the numbers dwindled to a few who remained, married to Chinese, those who worked with the Chinese Communist party and others who did business or continued their often interesting lives.
1949 People’s Republic of China established. Israel was one of the first governments to recognize the establishment of the Chinese state. David Ben Gurion was eager to develop ties with China and its socialist credentials were appealing to the socialist oriented new Israelis.
1949 Within the next several years most all the Jews of Shanghai, Harbin and the smaller contemporary communities leave for Israel, Australia, U.S, Canada.
1950 While Stalin’s Anti-Semitic horror campaign is in full swing throughout the Soviet Union, lack of opposition at Jews and Zionists and welcoming words from Mao Zedong leads to increasing numbers of Jews entering China, a trend which would continue through 1955. While many might be tempted to suggest that very little occurred during the so-called “cold period” (1950-1992), it seems this time instead marked the beginning of what is now becoming of mutual cooperation and development between Israel and China;
1952 Two delegates from Kaifeng represent the Jewish community in the National Day celebrations in Beijing. They meet President Zhou Enlai and request the Jews be recognized as a national minority. The request was politely denied, yet on a local level, some descendants continued to be recognized as Youtai ren (Jews) in their residential documents.
1955-1956 PRC seems more interested in pursuing diplomatic relations with other Arab and third world nations at the price of relations with Israel. It is argued that China chose to focus on its struggles with the Soviet Union, whose attempts to infiltrate the Middle East it strategically opposed. Anti-Israel propaganda from China, which lasted until 1976, painted a picture of the PRC as anti-Israel.
1978 China begins to purchase military equipment and technology from Israel, through the efforts of Menachem Begin, Israel’s Prime Minister and Shaul Eisenberg a process marking genuine political commitment to establishing a clear agenda of mutual defense strategy. 1980 The shipment of more significant amounts of military technology and equipment to China, allowing trade to flourish; it would be the first of many such exchanges to take place throughout the 1980s.
1992 China and Israel establish full diplomatic relations. For China, established diplomatic relations with Israel possibly meant greater ability to penetrate into American political economy through Jewish connections. China-Israel relations develop on the basis of four important criteria: Sino-Israeli Defense relations, civilian trade relations, agriculture and agricultural technology and science, technology and education exchanges.
1992 Kaifeng municipal government allows the founding of The Society for the Research of Jewish History and Culture of Kaifeng, headed by Jewish descendant and scholar Zhao Xiangru. Local scholar Wang Yisha publishes his detailed study of the Jewish descendants Spring and Autumn of the Chinese Jews.
1992 The first Jewish studies conference is held in China. Many more would continue to be held in Shanghai, Harbin and Shandong universities.
1993 Kaifeng municipal government officially authorizes the construction of the synagogue according to its old structure. Officially, it is designated to serve only as a museum rather than as an active synagogue.
1993 Ministries of agriculture in Israel and China signed the “Memorandum of understanding” and throughout the 1990s the two nations have launched several highly successful agriculture experiments, greatly benefiting trade and improving the standards of their cooperation. This year also saw deeper levels of cooperation take place in the fields of water resource management and in purification technologies.
1995 A document was signed between China and Israel endorsing deeper cooperation in education and foreign students were more openly permitted to travel abroad to participate in scholarly exchanges.
1996 Construction Office for the Kaifeng Jewish centre / museum is closed down by the local government, whereby the reconstruction plan abolished.
----- Decision implemented to erase the designation as ‘Jews’ from all the residential documents. Jewish descendants are given the option to choose Hui (Moslem Chinese) or Han (ethnic Chinese) as their nationality. This represents the government’s vigilance toward any sort of revival of Jewish identity in Kaifeng.
1998 Rabbi Shalom Greenberg settles in Shanghai and re-establishes orthodox Jewish communal activities, including synagogue prayers, kosher dining etc.
1998, the municipal government of Shanghai conducted an extensive renovation of the Ohel Rachel synagogue. Used for many years as a storage facility, the venerable ivy-covered building had stood virtually empty within the grounds of the Ministry of Education. With some 700 seats in its main sanctuary, it is the largest remaining synagogue in the Far East. Ohel Rachel has been visited by a succession of the world’s dignitaries, among them German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Shanghai also boasts a center of Jewish Studies, which conducts classes in Hebrew, produces films and television programs, and conducts tours of Jewish sights in Shanghai.
1999 Shanghai Jewish community are allowed to convene for New Year’s prayer in the Ohel Rachel synagogue, recently renovated by the local government. Trade between Israel and China reached 550 million dollars.
2001, Rabbi Shimon and Dini Freundlich moved to Beijing from Hong Kong and set up a Chabad centre and educational facilities.
2004, National Government’s Ministry of Higher Education sponsors a key research institute in the Social Studies in the area of Jewish religion and funds the  Centre for Judaic studies at at Shandong University in Jinan, capital of Shandong Province, under the leadership of Professor Fu Youde. This centre begins translating Jewish classics into Chinese and training a generation of scholars in Judaism, classical texts, religious, philosophic and cultural studies
2004, China-Israel trade reached 2.2 billion Dollars, but considering trade with Hong Kong, actual numbers are as high as 5.7 billion US.
2005, Professor M. Avrum Ehrlich is appointed a professor of Jewish studies in the department of philosophy and at the Centre for Judaic and Inter Religious Studies at Shandong University.
2005, Attempts by various Jewish bodies and individuals to preserve the old Jewish ghetto area of Hongkao district where Jews found refuge against the Nazi Holocaust during the Second World War, had sympathetic interest from the Shanghai municipal government, which has signaled its willingness to save some of the buildings in this historic neighborhood.
2005 After living six years in Jerusalem without official status, Kaifeng Jewish descendant Jin Guangyuan (Shlomo) and his family complete conversion to Judaism, thereby obtaining Israeli citizenship. This raises hope in Kaifeng that more Descendants will be able to make Aliyah, the facilitation of which Jerusalem based institute, Shavei Yisrael, has taken up as one of its primary goals.      
2005, Shandong University holds its first annual summer school in Jewish studies with over eighty Chinese students attending from all around China studying Jewish history, Hebrew and Kabballah.
2006, Chinese exports to Israel rose to $2.43 billion and Israeli exports to China totalled more than $958.4 million.
2006, Israel's Chief Sephardi Rabbi, Shlomo Amar visited Shanghai and hopes to convince the Chinese government to recognize Judaism as an official religion.
2006, a new Jewish Center, containing a synagogue, a school, a kosher restaurant and women's ritual baths opened in Shanghai.
2007, a new branch of Chabad opens in Pudong District of Shanghai.
2007, new Jewish centre, ritual baths and school open in Beijing under the leadership of Rabbi Freundlich.
2007, in January Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an official visit to Beijing.
2007, the Chinese government instituted new regulations for adoptions, including banning single individuals, gays and lesbians, and those over the age of 50, which will affect many Jewish families seeking to adopt Chinese children.
2008, His Excellency Amos Nadai is appointed Israel’s Ambassador to China.

Survey of Historical Jewish Personalities in China
M. Avrum Ehrlich

There was speculation that a number of the Kaifeng Jews were prominent members of the emperor’s court. But the most outstanding and curious role of Jews in China comes in the early 20th century. Few foreigners had the opportunity to observe from close and even participate in the tumultuous rise of the new republic of China. Of those few an exceptionally high number of them were Jews. Through separate and unrelated series of events Jews were involved in different roles in the history of modern China. Their stories are fascinating and sometimes touching and not popularly known. It lays the foundations for the future relationship and sense of collegiality between the Jewish and Chinese nations.

Morris "Two Gun" Cohen
Morris Abraham Cohen (1887-1970) was born into an impoverished Polish-Jewish family in Radzanów, Poland, who eventually fled to London's East end,
where Cohen was essentially a delinquent.  His love of the theater and the boxing arena may have shown potential in his character, but Cohen's first arrest when he was very young, seems to have laid the foundation for a life of delinquency and chaos. He was eventually sent to the Hayes Industrial Home for Wayward Jewish lads and in 1905, he was sent further away, to Western Canada. Although he spent some time living a farmer's life in Western Canada, Morris Cohen was destined for an exciting life; as an adventure seeker, on more than one occasion, his flare for colorful and exciting antics gambling and playing with trouble as a real estate broker landed him in jail. Oddly enough Cohen established a connection with a number of exiled Chinese, and wound up joining Sun Yat-sens's anti-Manchu organization.  His business activities with Sun Yat-sen and other dubious activities, mainly in Shanghai and Canton, led him to develop a reputation, but his nickname was the result of a shooting incident, which led Morris to carry two guns. He is attributed with being the personal body guard for Sun Yat Sen and helping the Nationalists establish their intelligence operations and is even credited by some with getting China to abstain from voting against the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947.

Dr Jacob Rosenfeld
Dr. Jacob Roseneld (1902-1952) was born in Lemburg, now Mvov, part of Western Ukraine. Rosenfeld was fortunate enough to escape the fate of so many captured Jews in Austro-Hungarian territory and Nazi Germany. When Jacob was conditionally released in 1939, he made haste to enter one of the only territories that did not require a visa. He soon found himself in what many called "little Vienna" in Shanghai, China, along with some 25,000 other European Jews, but the political turmoil and horrors of war influenced Rosenfeld strongly into joining the New Fourth Army in 1941. He lived in Jinan, Shandong province. Dr. Rosenfeld quickly rose up the ranks in the army and in active duty as a medical officer, improved and organized hygienic conditions and trained medical staff, and his position was elevated to the rank of General in the Mao's Red Army. He became a hero for many during the war with the Japanese and a statue exists of him at one of Jinan’s oldest hospitals. After returning home to Vienna to devastating loss of family and friends, Rosenfeld tried to return to China, but was denied a visa. He eventually returned to Israel, where he died in 1952. His grave was a pilgrimage spot for the first official Chinese delegations that arrived after diplomatic relations were restored in 1992.

Dr. Robert Pollitzer
Robert Pollitzer (1885-1968) graduated from Vienna University in Medicine, before moving to Harbin, China, in 1919, where Harbin's Plague prevention unit hired him permanently. During that time, Pollitzer became one of the World's leading authorities on the plague and cholera, through his research and numerous publications and practice of medicine throughout China, mainly in plague prevention. He was considered a hero by many Chinese as he moved around the provinces trying to cure disease. He went on to become an internationally known epidemiologist and former member of the League of Nations Anti-Epidemic Commission. Eventually, Pollitzer was located to Geneva with his family, where he worked at the WHO headquarters, before moving to the USA. There has recently been talk amongst some Chinese artists and filmmakers of making a movie about his life.

Ruth Weiss
Ruth Weiss (1908- 2006 ) was Jewish-born Austrian-Chinese educator, journalist, and lecturer, and a witness to the Chinese Revolution and the early stages of the establishment of the PRC.
Weiss was born in Vienna, and graduated in German and English Studies from the University of Vienna. In 1933 she traveled to Shanghai, at a time when so many European Jewish refugees were escaping the Nazis. There, Weiss worked as a freelance journalist, while employed at a Jewish School, at the School of the Chinese Committee of Intellectual Cooperation, and at the West China Union University. Eventually, she took a post at a radio station in New York, although she returned to China and from 1952 to 1965, where she was a lecturer for the Publishing House for Foreign Literature.
In 1955, Ruth Weiss was one of about one hundred foreign-born residents to receive Chinese citizenship and in 1983 was named one of eleven foreign experts, by the Communist Party of China, part of membership of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. She died in Beijing, aged 97.

Aaron Avshalomov

Aaron Avshalomov (1894 – 1956) was born in Nikolayevsk, eastern Siberia. As a child growing up in Nikolaeivsk on the Amur River, Avshalomov came to love the  Beijing opera pieces and Chinese folk songs sung by the local Chinese population. In 1916, after study in the Zurich Conservatory, Avshalomov  went directly  to Beijing, Tianjin, and Qingdao, where he collected folk songs that would be incorporated into later compositions. He lived in China from 1916 to 1946, with a brief stint in the U.S. He was a key figure in the evolution of modern Chinese music and the introduction of Chinese themes into musical performances in the West. He returned to Shanghai from the U.S in 1929 where he worked as a librarian and conductor of the Shanghai City Symphony and composing works for the piano and violin, such as The Twilight Hour of Yan Kuei Fei (1933) and The Great Wall (1933–41), which was premiered there in 1945. His first opera drawing from Chinese sources was Guan Yin, produced in Beijing in 1925. Today his work is described as a particular fusion of traditional elements of Chinese music, in the 'colorful Russian style' of Rimsky-Korsakov. He premiered his first work in Beijing in 1925, an opera entitled, Kuan Yin.
In 1932 he arrived in Shanghai and met Nie Er, the composer of ‘The march of the Volunteers’. Avshalomov produced the first orchestration of this song, which later became the national anthem of the People’s Republic.
Avshalomov went on to write the ballet “Soul of Qin” and the pantomime “Intense Shadows”.  His masterpiece “The Great Wall” was a musical drama based on the tragic story of a woman named Meng Jiangnu, who lived in the Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE).  It premiered in Shanghai in November 1945.  At the encouragement of U.S. General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Avshalomov traveled to the United States with the hope of staging “The Great Wall” there.  He was stranded in the United States by the Chinese Civil War and was unable to return to China.  Before his death in 1956 he completed another musical drama based on Chinese themes, “The Twilight of Royal Lady Young”.   In 1985  Jacob Avshalomov,  Aaron’s Chinese-born son and conductor of the Portland (Oregon) Junior Symphony Orchestra, came to China to attend commemorations of what would have been his father’s ninetieth birthday.  In Beijing and Shanghai Jacob had the honor of conducting all of his father’s China-related works.
During the Japanese invasion and occupation of China, and then the Second World War, Avshalomov was under house arrest, before immigrating to the United States, where he remained permanently until his death.

Sydney Shapiro
Sydney Shapiro became a Chinese citizen in 1963, and throughout the nearly forty years that he lived in Beijing, he was not only been instrumental for 58 years as a magazine copy editor, but as a translator and writer who has been critically acclaimed in China and around the world as an important Jewish thinker of contemporary China.
Shapiro was important throughout the earliest stages of China's path toward modern development, pioneering through China and raising awareness of its past, present and future. This is especially clear through his numerous translations into coherent and accurate English; Shapiro has guided the West into developing an understanding of Jews in Old China, contemporary China, even Chinese literature. Perhaps his most recognized work, Shapiro's autobiography is entitled I Chose China.

Israel Epstein

Israel Epstein (1915-2005) was born in Warsaw, Poland, but with the increasing Anti-Semitism and the approach of the German army on Poland, his family moved to China. When Israel Epstein was just 15 years old he began to work for the Peking and Tientsin Times as a journalist. Epstein was privileged to have covered a variety of exciting news stories as a journalist in the early stages of the establishment of the PRC; his exploits were even covered in the New York Times, when he was forced to fake his own death to escape the Japanese.
In 1944, Epstein left China to travel to Britian and America with his first wife, but eventually, in 1951 he returned to China, where he lived and worked for China Today, until his retirement at the age of 70, although he was given the title of editor emeritus for the remainder of his days. In 1957, Epstein was granted Chinese citizenship; he became a member of the Communist Party of China in 1964 and the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 1983. Israel Epstein was given the honor of meeting most of the leaders of China from Zhou Enlai, to the present leader Hu jintao, who also attended Epstein's  funeral service, held at Babaoshan Cemetery for Revolutionaries.

Sam Ginsbourg
Sam Ginsbourg (1914-1980) was the son of a Russian Jew from a small town in southeastern Byelorussia, who eventually became an enterprising lumber trader, and a Jewish Russian mother, who graduated from the Omsk Medical Institute with honors, as a dentist.
His first experiences in China, were in Harbin in 1919-1922. He experienced Anti-Semitism for the first time, as a child in a small community in Imianpo (about 100kn from Harbin), when he was attacked by some children. Ginsbourg’s family finally moved to Shanghai on October 24, 1926. There, over a period of years, Ginsbourg frequently experienced the political unrest and war as a result of Japanese invasion of China. Eventually, after 1932, he moved to Nanking where he was employed as a stenographer, eventually gaining experience and education throughout China, in a number of fields. Finally in October 1948, Ginsbourg moved to Jinan, where he began to teach Russian, while supervising translation of Russian works into Chinese, including The Ideological and Political Education of Middle School Pupils in the Soviet Union.
Ginsbourg stayed in Jinan, Shandong, for the next three and half decades, employed as a professor in Shandong University. In his auto-biography, at least politically, Ginsbourg seems to have been a modest and quiet man, but throughout the early years of political uncertainty and great turmoil, until his death in 1980, he witnessed some of the most important political changes in Chinese contemporary history. Sam Ginsbourg’s autobiography is entitled My First Sixty Years in China. He became well known at Shandong University and left a wife and children and his role at the university and his friendship with the University president may have influenced Jewish studies at the university and the establishment of a Centre for Jewish studies, which is presently the most important academic centre for research in Jewish philosophy, culture and texts.

Jews in Major Chinese Cities
Contemporary Overview:
M. Avrum Ehrlich

The 21st century Jewish migration to China has many different features. China is becoming a political, economic, cultural hub of Asia and the world, and as it is a magnet to many individuals and peoples, Jews among them.
It is a curiosity that individual Jews have played supportive roles regarding China over the last few hundred years. Some of the great sinologists of Hungary, Germany and Britain have been Jews. Many of the recent advisors on Asian affairs to American presidents have been Jewish and have been identified as having helped bridge the American – Chinese divide. Prominent amongst them was Henry Kissinger. Some of the only Westerners to remain in China through its period of isolation were Jews. Some of the first people to enter into business and cultural relations in the late 1970s, 1980s were Jews. Six of the ten foreign born members of the Central Government’s People’s Consultative Conference are Jewish.
In response to the growing expatriate communities in China’s major cities, the Chinese government came to a not so formalized understanding that these groups may convene for their ritual practice without government interference, providing they strictly adhere to the rule that no Chinese nationals may attend these activities. Unlike other religious groups, this limitation is not a problem for Jews and its non-proselytizing nature, however, this is not always understood by Chinese authorities concerned with fears of the spread of foreign religion in China.
Even though the Chinese government does not formally recognize Judaism as a legal religion in China, it has opened relations with the State of Israel and has come to accommodations with the Jewish community. It has accepted the rights of Jews to congregate. The inevitable process of full recognition as a religious group seems to be awaiting the right time. Meanwhile local governments in Harbin, Tianjin and Shanghai are commemorating their Jewish populations and funding the renovations of cemeteries, synagogues and important historical places. Chinese officials are generally proud of their liberal and humane relations towards the Jews during the Nazi persecutions.
The issue of the Jewish descendents of Kaifeng is still a delicate subject for the Chinese government and only a few of the descendents have been formerly recognized in their identity card as being of Jewish nationality. The sensitivity emerges from fears the Muslim population in the same region may react to this and provoke unrest. The second reservations from the government may be that the recognition of a small group of 600 Jewish descendents as an ethnic minority, could legitimize the claims and requests of many other small minorities, for formal recognition and rights. Nevertheless the small Jewish community in Kaifeng draws a lot of international interest, many journalists, senators, diplomats, distinguished Jews from all walks of life have visited the Jewish community of Kaifeng and it must confound the government how such a small group of very poor and non descript  g Chinese workers, in a old and forgotten Chinese city, can attract the attention and imagination of so many influential foreigners.
Today, China attracts different types of Jews with different backgrounds, from different countries, cultures, languages. The attraction for many people, no less to Jews, is the prospects of meaningful employment opportunities and a cheep alternative to competitive Western cities. Some Jews have come to China in their golden age to work, teach, live cheaply with their pensions or savings intact. Some are married to Chinese women and work in China, some intermarriage results in conversion to Judaism.  Most Jews come as skilled professionals or for their own trade businesses. Many come for trade fairs and live in China for short periods. Some Jewish individuals moved to China to establish businesses and have since settled and others are here for long periods of time, from 5-10 years. A large number of people remain in China for 2-3 years before moving on or returning to their homes. Many have decided to remain on, developing deep business or employment relations, mastering Chinese and building lives in China. Gradually, the community of permanent residents is growing.
The Chabad Movement is the most dominant Jewish presence in China with rabbis in Shanghai, Beijing, Guanzhou and new communities and satellite community centers opening up with kindergartens and schools, mikveh, kosher food and a hub for community life. A cross section of Jewish existence in China is poetically illustrated at Shabbat or festival meal in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou telling more about the diversity and individuality of the Jews living in China.
Shanghai and Beijing are the major sites of the contemporary evolvement of new Jewish communities in China. In both cases, liberal congregations were established first, with Chabad-Lubavitch moving in later – to Shanghai in 1998 and Beijing in 2001.  Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south draw many Jewish traders and business people to its trade shows and Chabad has set up a centre their accommodating their Shabbat and holiday provisions and for the Jews that live there permanently. Qingdao and Jinan in Shandong province are developing communities, the former mainly Israelis and trade oriented, the latter, attracting academics to Shandong University and tourist groups as well as those fostering Chinese – Jewish relations.
At a Shabbat dinner at the Chabad centers, there can easily be a group of Jewish business men and women from Iran, or a French Moroccan Jewish family living and trading in the city, students of political science, Chinese culture and language students from all over the Jewish world, sitting with Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn working the garment trade or coming to supervise Kosher product manufacturing.
Many diplomatic, advisory and government positions in the American, Australian, Argentinean, European Union, Israeli embassies and consulates are Jews. The Ambassador for the European Union is presently a Jew. Israeli travelers, investors, traders, foreign experts may constitute up to fourty percent of the Jewish population of China.
Americans, Australians, South African and European business people have come to China to work and stay periods of time. Foreign experts, foreign teachers, heads of companies, senior executives from large multinational corporations now live in major Chinese cities.
With expatriate communities continuously strengthening their presence in many parts of China, and with many people settling down for growing periods of time, it seems that Jewish communities in China are on a road to greater strength and expansion, both in numbers as well as in terms of influence and stature. These communities are far from being transient.
A large number of Jews re-visit China on “pilgrimages” to the graves of their family members or to revisit places they lived. Jewish heritage tours to Kaifeng, Shanghai and Harbin attract a few thousand Jews every year. The incoming of so many well to do Jewish people to these areas is noted by the local Chinese authorities and they have gone to efforts to ensure the preservation of cemeteries and cultural sites of interest to Jewish tourism. There is still no agreement regarding the property rights over the old shanghai synagogues and the tracts of land confiscated from Jews and nationalized during modern China’s establishment.
The kosher industry in China is a fast growing business and many of the well known kosher supervisors work in China and tens if not hundreds of ultra orthodox supervisors come to China every year to ensure the production of kosher products. The site of ultra orthodox Jews entering into second tier industrialized Chinese cities to check the production of a food line at a factory, is unusual sight to behold and the trend looks as if it will grow.
There have been a number of Chinese artists, singers, directors and cultural leaders who have collaborated with Jews in their respective fields and developed Chinese Jewish cultural relations.
Jewish studies is being studied in many cities around China. A number of Beijing universities teach Hebrew language. Nanjing university has courses in Jewish History. Henan University in Kaifeng teaches Holocaust studies. Shanghai Academy of the Social Sciences teaches Israel and Political Studies. Shandong University in Jinan was appointed to set up a key research institute in Jewish studies with its mandate to train a generation of Chinese scholars in Jewish studies and undertaking large translation projects making Jewish culture and wisdom available in the Chinese language.
The way Chinese scholar happened upon areas relating to Judaism was incidental usually via research in a discipline and incidentally unearthing an interest in a Jewish component.   Because Jewish studies intersects many of the major fields in philosophy, theology, literature, sociology, history, music, politics and dozens of other disciplines, every so often a Chinese scholar would stumble on the Jewish component or experience in any of these respective disciplines and take a deeper interest in them.
The Chinese attitude towards Jews is very positive. There seems to be a general sentiment that the Jews are very clever and successful and should be admired. Israel is also seen by many to be brave and innovative and has corporation with various agricultural industries in China with much success wining the estimation of many Chinese.

References and Further Reading

Bickers, Robert A. 1999 Britain in China: Community, Culture and Colonialism 1900-1949.  Manchester University Press; New York: St. Martin's Press.
Cohen, Israel. 1925. The Journal of a Jewish Traveller. Plymouth: Mayflower Press.
Jackson, Stanley. 1968. The Sassoons.New York: E.P. Dutton.
Dicker, Herman. Wanderers and Settlers in the Far East, Twayne,, NY, 1962
Ezra, Edward Isaac. Chinese Jews, Shanghai, 1926.
Dillon, Michael. Religious Minorities and China. London: Minority Rights Group International,  2001.
Eber Irene. 1993. “Kaifeng Jews Revisited: Sinification and Affirmation of Identity,” Monumenta Serica, 41.    
-------- Eber. 1999b. “Kaifeng Jews: Sinification of Identity” in Jonathan Goldstein, ed., The Jews of China: Historical and Comparative Perspectives Vol.1. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Goldstein, Jonathan. (ed.) The Jews of China, Volume one: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.
---. (ed.) The Jews of China, Volume two: A Sourcebook and Research Guide. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000.
Heppner, Ernest G. 1993. Shanghai Refuge : A Memoir of the World War II Jewish
Ghetto.  Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
Kranzler, David. 1976, 1988. Japanese, Nazis and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938-1945, New York: Ktav Publishing House.
Liberman, Yaacov. 1998. My China: Jewish Life in the Orient: 1900-1950.
Jerusalem: Geffen Publishing House.
Pan Guang. 1996. The Jews in Shanghai. Shanghai: Shanghai Pictorial Publishing House.
Kublin, Hyman, ed. Studies of the Chinese Jews: Selections from Journals East and West, Paragon Books.
Leslie, Donald Daniel. The Survival of the Chinese Jews: the Jewish Community of Kaifeng. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972.
---. The Chinese – Hebrew Memorial Book of the Jewish Community of K'aifeng. Belconnen: Canberra College of Advance Eucation, 1984..
---. Jews and Judaism in Traditional China: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica Institute, 1998.
Leventhal, Donald and Mary, ed. Faces of the Jewish Experience in China, Jewish Historical Society of Hong Kong, 1990. (Spertus)
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