Shimon Peres Advocated Close Relations With China

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Israel’s former president Shimon Peres, who died last month at the age of 93, had a career in public service that spanned more than six decades. He held almost every senior post in Israeli politics.

The presidency, which he attained in 2007, allowed Peres to travel around the world, promoting Israel’s high-tech prowess and cultural reach.

“He had a very forward-looking belief in technology,” according to Professor Yehudah Mirsky of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and a former official of the U.S. State Department.  “He was always reading work on the cutting edge of things like nanotechnology, biotech and more.”

 In his 1994 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Peres had articulated his future-oriented vision. “Countries used to divide the world into their friends and foes,” he declared.

“No longer. The foes now are universal: poverty, famine, religious radicalization, desertification, drugs, proliferation of nuclear weapons, ecological devastation. They threaten all nations, just as science and information are the potential friends of all nations.”

In an interview he gave to American journalist David Samuels on Aug. 31 at the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa, a few weeks before his death, Peres remarked that “The way to peace is not war, and not negotiation. It’s innovation. To be great in science, you don’t have to go to war.”

Ever the optimist, Peres felt that the consciousness of the people in the Middle East would eventually change and embrace a new reality, one fueled by advances in science and technology. This, he believed, could be a force to transform and bring peace to the region.

Partly for that reason, he was also an advocate of closer Israeli relations with China. Peres noted that in the four decades since Deng Xiaoping came to power, “China has become almost equal to America.” Their industry is built on science, and they “use science, with all their might.”

Peres explained that he was among the first Israelis to visit post-Maoist China. “I began relations between this new China and Israel,” he said. “That’s the reason why, when I come to China, they still ask for my advice.”

Peres served as the honorary president of a China-friendly organization in Israel aimed at promoting bilateral ties, and attended the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Last December, at the age of 92, he traveled to Shantou, Guangdong province, to attend the groundbreaking of the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

This past February he posted a video wishing the Chinese people a happy new year. “China is all the time innovating new things. What China did over the last 40 or 50 years is unmatched in history,” he said. “I'm very glad the relations between China and Israel are all the time growing.”

In a telegram to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin following Peres’ death, President Xi Jinping of China called Peres a veteran statesman and diplomat, as well as the initiator and promoter of the peace process in the Middle East.

“He had visited China many times and had made an important contribution to the development of China-Israeli relations. Mr. Peres’ passing caused the Chinese people to lose an old friend,” Xi said.

In fact Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress, visited Israel and met with President Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the week before Peres died.

Zhang told the Israeli leaders that there is great potential for China and Israel to enhance their cooperation in various fields such as innovation, environmental protection, agriculture and biology.