Can China’s new ambassador to EU build bridges after doomed efforts in Israel?

Cai Run nearly pulled off a major diplomatic coup before the Gaza conflict, and now faces a major challenge in the form of the Ukraine war

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Cai Run, China’s new ambassador to the EU. Photo: Handout

Published: 2:00pm, 29 Sep 2024Updated: 3:33pm, 29 Sep 2024

A Chinese diplomat beams with satisfaction as an unlikely world leader smiles while leafing through a book dedicated to Xi Jinping Thought, plucked from a box on the desk that separates the pair.

The remarkable photo was taken a little over a year ago, in July 2023. The leader is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the diplomat is Cai Run, the Chinese ambassador in Tel Aviv at the time.

It was taken at a moment of relative stability in bilateral relations: Cai was brokering a visit to Beijing by Netanyahu that would have been designed to send a message to US President Joe Biden at a point when his relations with the Israeli government had come under strain.

Around the same time, in a previously unreported effort to curry favour in Beijing, Netanyahu had sent a copy of his own memoir – Bibi: My Story – to the Chinese leader.

“If the war hadn’t happened, if October 7 [the Hamas attack on Israel] hadn’t happened, the massacre and the invasion that we’re in, then remember that Netanyahu would have visited China,” said Tuvia Gering, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council specialising in relations between China and Israel.

Cai Run presents Benjamin Netanyahu with a volume dedicated to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s thoughts. Photo: X/@IsraeliPM

Had Netanyahu gone to Beijing, Gering said, Israel’s ties with China would probably have been upgraded to “strategic” level, as they were with the Palestinian Authority in June last year, “because they always like to raise and match”.