Biased Impartiality: Understanding China’s Contradictory Foreign Policy on Palestine

Abstract

This article debunks China’s claim of impartiality in its foreign policy toward Palestine and Israel since 1989, and especially during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Despite a declared commitment to the “two-state solution,” this article argues that a look at China’s policy decisions over the last three decades indicates that this is nothing more than rhetoric. Through an examination of China’s investments in Israeli settlements, its uncritical support for Arab normalization with Israel, its acceptance of the Jewishness of the Israeli state, its stance on Palestinian armed struggle, and its exclusion of Israel in its critiques of the United States’s hypocritical foreign policy, the article posits that China’s alleged impartiality serves to undermine Palestinian rights. It proposes a new conceptual framework, biased impartiality, to make sense of this contradictory behavior at once rhetorically supporting Palestinians while contributing to the status quo of Israeli settler colonialism. © 2025 Institute for Palestine Studies.