The wave of antisemitic discourse across Chinese digital platforms after the Hamas attacks of October 7 shocked many observers worldwide. Yet the speed, scale, and narrative coherence of this antisemitic surge did not emerge out of nowhere. I call it “Antisemitism 3.0”: a form of antisemitism that developed without the religious or racial traditions seen in Europe and North America – and crucially in a society with only a tiny, largely invisible foreign Jewish presence.

In my earlier essay for The Diplomat, I described three phases in China’s public discourse on Jewish people and Israel since 1992. The third phase, beginning in the early 2010s and crystallizing in the 2020s, marked not merely a diplomatic divergence with Israel, but a structural shift in how “Jews” and “Israel” were narrated within China’s ideological and digital environments. The distance between tropes of “Jewish business wisdom” and “Jewish control of global finance” turned out to be one nudge away. 

As China-U.S. rivalry intensified, older stereotypes mutated into suspicion and conspiracy almost seamlessly. The shift required no cultural rupture, but only recalibrated incentives, a polarized geopolitical narrative, and a digital ecosystem optimized for amplification – together creating the conditions for a new, accelerated form of antisemitism. This is the pivot that enabled Antisemitism 3.0.

Where Western antisemitism historically evolved through theological hostility (Antisemitism 1.0) and racial-biological ideology (Antisemitism 2.0), the Chinese case demonstrates a direct leap to a third form: ideological, narrative-driven, geopolitically functional antisemitism arising without a Christian legacy, without a racial Jewish “other,” and without a significant local Jewish community. 

In contemporary China, “the Jew” and “Israel” have become symbolic instruments for articulating nationalism, critiquing global capitalism, locating China within a contested world order, and expressing anti-American sentiment. Antisemitism is structured less by lived encounters than by political incentives and digital architectures.

Functionally, antisemitism gives domestic frustrations a face: “the Jew” becomes a convenient placeholder for explaining capitalism, American........

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