Chinese State Media Backs US College Campus Protesters: 'Justified'

An editorial in an English-language Chinese newspaper this week slammed the Biden administration's "nonchalant response" to the demands of student protesters that have been demonstrating on college campuses over U.S. support of Israel.

"These demands are fully justified given the US' backing of Israel's "self-defense campaign" in Gaza," the editorial says.

The editorial, headlined "US people know well what's going on," appeared in the state-run China Daily on Wednesday. The piece claimed the White House was using Israel as part of a proxy campaign against Iran and Russia:

"Washington has seized on Israel's response to the [Oct. 7 attacks] as the opportunity to use Tel Aviv as its enforcer to advance its overall Middle East geopolitical agenda to reduce the influence of Iran and Russia in the region," the editorial says.

The piece goes on to tie the campus protests to the war in Ukraine, arguing U.S. involvement in the crises in that country and Gaza shows a "disconnect between the US elites and ordinary Americans." The editorial ends by blasting America's "schizoid three-in-one China policy of confrontation, competition and, supposedly, cooperation."

Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment.

The editorial's support for the anti-Israel protests in the U.S. comes in spite of Beijing's policy of allowing virtually no dissent within its borders. In June, the world will mark the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which the Chinese military violently put down student-led demonstrations, killing hundreds of civilians. China has long censored any discussion of Tiananmen Square in its own media.

The China Daily piece was published on the same day Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Shanghai for a multi-day trip, one of several recent missions undertaken by top White House officials to diffuse tensions between the two superpowers. Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday afternoon to discuss, among other issues, China's support of Russia's war efforts in Ukraine.

Back home, protests on some of the country's most elite universities — from Columbia to Emory to USC — continued, with demonstrators calling for their schools to divest from companies supplying arms to the Israelis as well as broader calls for the U.S. to end its military support of Israel. Some of the protests have included rhetoric widely seen as anti-Semitic calls for violence, and many Jewish students have said they've been made fearful for their lives.

The ongoing war in Gaza, which was triggered after Hamas militants killed some 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 hostage on Oct. 7, has killed more than 30,000 people, including women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.