Reading Maryam Gholan’s recent article on the assimilation of Muslims in Britain, my mind turned to a story of assimilation in China, that of China’s centuries old Jewish population who, when I was young, we thought were a type of Muslim because they didn’t eat the pork so beloved of Han Chinese.
In the vast sweep of Chinese history, from dynastic splendour to revolutionary upheaval and techno-authoritarian modernity, a quiet minority has persisted—often unnoticed, sometimes celebrated, now largely symbolic. China’s Jewish population, a unique diaspora defined by both endurance and assimilation, tells of a story that I find rich with implications touching the resilience of decentralised identity, the dangers of state overreach, and the complex dance between religious freedom and political control.
In the 21st century, when Israel's diplomatic overtures extend across Asia and China's surveillance state deepens, the Jewish presence in China is a prism through which one can examine cultural liberty, international realism and, ignored by western elites, the enduring power of historical memory. But to understand its present and future, one must first understand the long arc of the Jewish experience in China.
The most famous Jewish community in Chinese history is that of Kaifeng, a city on the Yellow River once the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. The Jews of Kaifeng arrived during the 8th to 10th centuries, likely as traders from Persia or Mesopotamia via the Silk Road, settling during a time of cosmopolitan openness in Chinese society.
Known in Chinese as “Youtai,” these Jews were welcomed as “honest merchants” by Song emperors. Kaifeng’s Jewish community built a synagogue in 1163 and integrated deeply into Chinese life while maintaining religious rites: circumcision, dietary laws and Sabbath observance. They adopted Chinese surnames like Zhao, Ai, Jin, and Shi—echoes of integration that would become indistinguishable from Han culture over centuries.
And yet, despite imperial favour and commercial prosperity, this community never grew beyond a few thousand members. The pressures of assimilation, the absence of rabbinic leadership, and the lack of Hebrew literacy led to a slow dissolution of communal distinctiveness. By the 19th century, Jesuit missionaries and Protestant explorers found the community clinging to fragments of ritual and memory, but with no Hebrew-speaking rabbis and little doctrinal knowledge. The synagogue had collapsed in a flood; Torah scrolls had decayed.
The Kaifeng story is not one of persecution, but of assimilation by choice and circumstance. Without state coercion, the community adapted itself to a broader culture—not under duress, but through pragmatic coexistence. This early Jewish experience in China contrasts starkly with the pogroms, ghettoization, and anti-Semitic laws that plagued Jews in Christian Europe. China, even when autocratic, was rarely doctrinaire about religion in the same oppressive fashion.
The next major wave of Jewish settlement came not from merchants, but refugees—escaping the fury of 20th-century Europe. In Harbin, located in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, Russian Jews fleeing pogroms and later the Bolshevik Revolution established a vibrant community in the early 1900s. At its peak, Harbin was home to more than 20,000 Jews, complete with synagogues, Zionist youth movements, and Yiddish theatres.
But it was Shanghai that became the true sanctuary. During the rise of the Nazis, Shanghai, then a patchwork of foreign concessions, was one of the only places in the world that required no visa for entry. Between 1937 and 1941 nearly 20,000 European Jews found shelter in there, escaping almost certain death in the Holocaust. Libertarians might see Shanghai’s loose government as a striking example of absence of bureaucracy saved lives in contrast to the closed-door policies of Western democracies at the time.
The Japanese, who occupied the city during World War II, confined the Jews to the so-called “Hongkou Ghetto,” but refused German demands for extermination. Miraculously, most Jews survived the war, albeit in poverty and overcrowding.
Following World War II and the Communist victory in 1949, most of Shanghai’s Jews emigrated to Israel, the U.S., and Australia. The new People's Republic of China was hostile to religion, national feeling and foreign influence all things that defined the Jewish refugee experience. Judaism, while not outright banned, was suffocated through lack of institutions, oversight, and Party suspicion. Once again, China did not target Jews as Jews, but it made Jewish life nearly impossible through indiscriminate repression of religion.
Today, the descendants of Kaifeng’s ancient community still exist, perhaps a few hundred individuals. Some have rediscovered their Jewish roots, aided by Israeli outreach, independent scholars, and even DNA testing. But their journey toward religious revival faces roadblocks, predictably by the Chinese Communist Party.
Since around 2015 Beijing has cracked down on Jewish religious expression in Kaifeng. Informal synagogues have been shut, Passover seders banned, Hebrew classes forbidden. Government officials cite the need to prevent “foreign infiltration,” a term now used liberally in China’s campaign to Sinicize religion. Just as Christians, Muslims, and Tibetan Buddhists face state restrictions, Kaifeng’s would-be Jews face scrutiny despite their negligible numbers.
Why the concern? Because in the logic of the Chinese surveillance state, any transnational or non-CPP approved identity is a potential fifth column. A Chinese citizen asserting religious loyalty, especially one with ties to Israel or global Jewry, arouses suspicion. Kaifeng’s Jews are caught in a paradox: too small to be politically relevant, yet too culturally independent to be ignored.
This is a classic case of Big Government paranoia overriding individual autonomy. These are not foreign agents or separatists; they are ordinary Chinese rediscovering ancient traditions. But in a regime where loyalty is measured in conformity, the simple act of lighting a menorah becomes political defiance.
In recent decades, Israeli diplomats and Jewish NGOs have expressed interest in Kaifeng’s Jews. Some young descendants have emigrated to Israel under its Law of Return. Organizations like Shavei Israel have sponsored Hebrew education and religious training. For many Chinese Jews aliyah has been a profound act of spiritual and ancestral return.
But official Israeli policy toward China is cautious, some might say complicit. Unlike its outspoken stance on anti-Semitism in Europe or Islamic nations, Israel rarely criticizes Beijing’s repression of Kaifeng Jews.
Why? Because Israel sees China as a vital economic and technological partner, particularly as U.S. hegemony appears increasingly fragile. From arms sales to infrastructure projects, China-Israel relations have warmed considerably, even as Washington raises alarms about espionage and strategic dependency.
Therein lies the old dilemma: Realpolitik versus moral clarity. Should a Jewish state overlook religious repression for economic gain? Should it ignore the lessons of diaspora vulnerability in the name of trade? Or is Israel simply playing the same sovereign game every other nation plays—securing its interests, not its ideals?
Despite the odds, the idea of “Chinese Jews” still resonates—both historically and aspirationally. In a world where diasporas navigate between globalisation and nationalism, the Kaifeng story offers a different model: one of layered loyalties, and decentralised belonging. This model challenges the assumption that people must belong to rigid State-approved categories—Han or Hui, Israeli or Chinese, religious or secular. It suggests that communities can survive without state protection, and that faith can persist even without temples or institutions.
In parallel, it also warns us of the fragility of cultural liberty in the face of authoritarian centralisation. In China today, all expressions of nonconformity, be they Jewish, Islamic, or Christian, are surveilled, curtailed, or commodified. The Party demands uniformity, not because it fears religion per se, but because it fears unsanctioned meaning.
As Israel courts Beijing and Western businesses flock to Chinese markets, the Kaifeng Jews stand as a reminder: of a world where culture is older than the state, where faith predates bureaucracy, and where liberty—personal, spiritual, communal—must be defended not just by laws, but by memory and will.
The history of Jews in China is not one of persecution, but of persistent adaptation, a diaspora that found space in a non-Abrahamic civilisation. Today, their story risks being forgotten—not because it lacks drama, but because it lacks political utility. The Kaifeng Jews represent a quieter heroism: of individuals maintaining meaning without permission, of families passing down rituals without recognition, of communities surviving without state approval.
In an age where both China and Israel assert the primacy of State interests, perhaps the most radical idea is that freedom precedes the State and its laws, and that identity need not beg for approval to bloom.