Lost in the fervor of the U.S. electoral fight and post-election analysis was an alarming story about China’s antisemitic influence operations targeting candidates. Reports that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is suddenly using antisemitism in its influence operation efforts may be more of a new, calculated step than an accident, aligning Beijing more closely with autocratic partners like Russia and Iran. The CCP is now tapping into tactics long used by these regimes, revealing its ambitions to join their ranks more fully.
This troubling development raises critical questions about the CCP’s evolving strategy and what it signals for the global democratic order. Historically, China’s influence operations have focused more on promoting pro-CCP narratives and deflecting criticism of its domestic policies, such as on Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. By injecting antisemitism into U.S. electoral discourse, the CCP is experimenting with a divisive tool that has been effective for other autocracies, demonstrating that China is drawing from a well-established, anti-democratic, antisemitic playbook.
While China’s government has long targeted ethnic and religious minorities like Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and Christians, in the past Jews were largely outside this focus. Chinese society lacks the deep historical and societal roots of antisemitism seen in places like Russia, where violent pogroms and state-sponsored persecution of Jews have shaped its history. Iran leverages the Arab-Israeli conflict to stoke anti-Jewish sentiment for geopolitical gain. The Kremlin has targeted Ukraine’s Jewish president and Venezuela often deploys conspiracy theories about global Jewish cabals.
This shift also indicates the CCP’s increasing willingness to take risks on the international stage. Historically, Beijing had maintained a neutral stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, carefully balancing its economic and technological ties with Israel. However, by adopting antisemitic rhetoric, China shows it might be ready to further sacrifice its relationship with Israel to deepen its relations with Russia and Iran. This decision could signal that Beijing is no longer content with remaining neutral but instead is choosing to align itself more closely with these autocratic regimes, prioritizing authoritarian solidarity over traditional diplomacy.
Organizations like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) support hundreds of researchers around the world who monitor the information space. From Africa to Latin America, we have detected an increased willingness by China to intervene on ethnic and religious grounds as well as using gender and stereotypes of marginalized groups to influence outcomes of policy debates and elections.
What makes this experiment particularly concerning is that it might not stop with antisemitism. The CCP could be trialing a new phase of deepening influence operations to inflame ethnic divisions for its geopolitical gain. While current efforts have been primarily online, China is already adept at offline influence operations through entities like the United Front Work Department, a CCP bureaucracy that builds alliances with non-communist groups to advance the party’s goals. It has leveraged these networks to target Tibetan and Uyghur groups internationally and could be used to stoke ethnic and religious divisions abroad further, deepening its impact through covert local efforts in target countries.
This approach could extend, for example, to China’s near abroad in Southeast Asia, where ethnic and religious divisions are already prominent. Christian-Muslim tensions in the Philippines’ Mindanao, Indonesia’s religious intolerance and ethnic unrest during elections, Malaysia’s dynamics between its Malay Muslim majority and Chinese and Indian minorities, and Thailand’s southern separatist struggle all present opportunities for Beijing to shape narratives or distract these countries from pressing issues like the South China Sea, keeping them at bay to further its regional dominance.
Furthermore, this tactic may be an attempt by the CCP to divert attention from its domestic issues. Beijing is grappling with a faltering economy, a housing market crisis, and growing internal unrest, and this new step in influence operations could be a way to shift focus outward, framing global narratives that reinforce Beijing’s geopolitical goals while masking domestic instability. As the CCP seeks to align itself more closely with autocracies like Russia and Iran, using antisemitic content helps solidify its position in this global club of authoritarian regimes while distracting from economic and political challenges at home.
Whatever China’s ultimate goal, the new adoption of old antisemitic tropes is deeply painful. My personal experience was typical: Having lived, studied, and worked in China and Hong Kong for nearly a decade, one identity I never had to worry about was being Jewish. My Jewishness was either ignored or a topic of benign curiosity but never a source of hatred. I visited synagogues in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kaifeng, and Beijing – both historical and present-day Jewish communities. Jews have experienced relative, if quiet, acceptance in China. Indeed, the worst form of antisemitism I saw was limited to books like “How to Become Rich Like the Jews,” a reflection of ignorance rather than hostility.
Nonetheless, for the CCP, ethnic and religious minorities must serve the needs of the party first – an approach that reflects the regime’s priorities, not the views of the broader Chinese people.
Jewish organizations, democracy advocates, policymakers, and legislators should heed this moment as a wake-up call. As the CCP refines its tactics, its influence operation efforts will likely become more sophisticated, more targeted, and more dangerous – particularly for global ethnic and religious minorities, including Jews.
This move is not an isolated anomaly – it’s another signal of a larger, coordinated effort among authoritarian regimes to learn from each other and disrupt democracies around the world. Such campaigns don’t typically favor one party over another. They are designed to inflame divisions regardless of political affiliation, aiming to weaken democratic institutions as a whole. This makes it crucial to address the issue as a non-partisan threat to democracy itself. Beijing’s antisemitic influence operation campaign signals that the global fight for democracy has entered a new and more dangerous phase.