In recent years Israel has pivoted noticeably to Asia, with fast growing economic and security ties with countries like India and South Korea, and a complicated relationship with the ambitious Chinese superpower.

As part of our focus on the challenges and policy choices of Israel’s leaders, the Begin Center is hosting conversations with experts and Israeli diplomats to examine this significant trend in foreign policy.

For this fourth and final session of the series, we will be discussing the history and current reality of Israel’s relationship with China; including China’s numerous investments in the Israeli economy, its interest in Israel’s hi-tech expertise, and Israel's challenge of negotiating a relationship with China while remaining loyal to its closest ally, the United States.

Outside of the Middle East, there are few more complex and potentially hazardous challenges for Israel’s leaders than the question of how to relate to China. We will be hosting one of Israel’s foremost China-experts, Alexander Pevzner, to help guide us through this topic.

Alexander Pevzner is a research assistant in the Israel-China Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

Pevzner studies political communication, media, and foreign policy in contemporary China, and is a frequent contributor to leading Chinese news media publications. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Reichman University (IDC Herzliya) and at the College of Management Academic Studies, Rishon LeZion, where he was Founding Director of Israel’s Chinese Media Center (ICMC).

Prior to joining the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), he was a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, Director of China Affairs at The Israel Project, and a correspondent with Dow Jones Newswires in Taiwan. Pevzner holds an MA in Asian Studies and a BA in International Relations and East Asian Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He trained in modern Chinese in Tsinghua University in Beijing and classical Chinese in National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei.