Yin Zhiguang’s Academic Crusade Fuses Cultural Decolonization, Maoist Revivalism, and Antisemitic Tropes to Advance China’s Global Narrative
Yin Zhiguang, a Professor of International Relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, advocates global “cultural decolonization” and strengthening the China-led Global South. His Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and Maoist appeals to the Third World appear to align closely with President Xi Jinping’s ideological framework.
While Yin consistently denounces the United States, the only other Western nation facing comparable criticism from him is Israel. According to widely accepted definitions, he expresses antisemitic views by applying unique double standards to Israel, suggesting global Jewish influence behind alleged misdeeds, and condemning Israel for actions also attributed to China.
In recent interviews, Yin has identified pivotal moments that shaped his political consciousness. For instance, the widespread anti-Chinese protests originating in Tibet in 2008 profoundly unsettled him. Equally disturbing was the inhumane exploitation he witnessed as assistant professor at Zayed University in the UAE, where impoverished Egyptian, Jordanian, and Yemeni laborers suffered severe mistreatment. However, neither Tibet nor inter-Arab exploitation involved Israel or Jews.
His reaction to Israel’s September 2024 pager attack against Hezbollah terrorists was revealing: “How dare the West speak of civilization? Israel’s atrocities reveal that Western civilization has never had a moral bottom line.”
This statement reflects a broader conflation in the Chinese imagination between the West and the Jews. Two decades ago, young Chinese generally admired Western civilization, and particularly American culture, and often associated Jews positively with Western intellectual and economic achievements.
However, the US-China trade war (2018) and subsequent diplomatic tensions significantly eroded perceptions of the West in China, impacting views of the Jews by extension. The Gaza wars (2021, 2023-5) provided China with additional opportunities to criticize the United States and Israel.
Yin’s accusations are at times exaggerated and unsubstantiated, such as asserting that “Israel has deliberately assassinated countless Palestinian poets.” He also described Israeli Jews as their parents’ Nazi prosecutors, the “armed guards of Gaza’s open-air concentration camp.”
It is unlikely that Yin has visited Gaza, and such claims could reflect an attempt to deflect attention from human rights criticisms against China: The Cultural Revolution-era mass persecutions and recent internment camps for Muslim Uyghurs.
At the end of the article, Yin emphasizes historical allegations against Israel: “Israel’s colonial rule over Palestine has lasted 77 years,” implying Israel’s creation in 1948 was inherently illegitimate.
In an article he published less than two weeks after the October 7 massacre, he claimed, “Israel’s regime is both an outpost of a contemporary capitalist global empire and a time-capsule of the 19th century capitalist colonial empires.” This echoes slogans familiar from Western anti-Zionist discourse.
Yin further asserted that Western criticism of Israel is silenced by financial capitalists…a shadow empire”, referencing antisemitic tropes about secret Jewish influence.
Yin manipulates Chinese history as he does Jewish history. He writes that in 1958, “China launched a rapid campaign of cultural decolonization”, requiring “the stimulus of new ideas,” but omits that Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, initiated the same year, resulted in tens of millions of deaths due to forced industrialization and collectivization. He inaccurately claims: “China has never been alone in this world…always a member of the Afro-Asian nations,” overlooking China’s centuries-long self-imposed isolation since the Ming dynasty.
The author exemplifies trends in Chinese academia under Xi Jinping’s prolonged rule, where historical narratives are frequently distorted, a common practice among Communist Parties since Lenin.
It is unclear if Yin influences Chinese government positions or widespread antisemitism in Chinese social media. While China lacks deep-rooted historical antisemitism, Yin obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2011, where, in 2024, some students now openly demonstrate support for Hamas, calling for “intifada until victory,” and threaten their Jewish classmates.
These ideas from Western campuses may have resonated within China’s elite universities, illustrating antisemitism as a cultural phenomenon spreading from the West to China.
This article serves as an introduction to Tuvia Gering’s book Liberating the Mind, published here.