Can it really be anti-semitism if it’s not anti? Potentially, yeah, if it places Jews conceptually outside the community of “ordinary” Chinese. A little speechifying and it’d be easy to turn that admiration into resentment.
On the other hand, 10,000 Jews in a population of 1.3 billion? Even the Saudis would have a hard time working up a ZOG conspiracy out of that.
Let’s call it a moral victory:
Showcased in bookstores between biographies of Andrew Carnegie and the newest treatise by China’s president are stacks of works built on a stereotype.
One promises “The Eight Most Valuable Business Secrets of the Jewish.”
Another title teases readers with “The Legend of Jewish Wealth.” A third provides a look at “Jewish People and Business: The Bible of How to Live Their Lives.”…
In the past few years, sales of “success” books have skyrocketed, publishers say, and now make up nearly a third of the works published in China, and perhaps no type of success book has been as well marketed or well received as those that purport to unveil the secrets of Jewish entrepreneurs. Many of these tomes sell upward of 30,000 copies a year and are thought of in the same inspirational way as many Americans view the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series…
Several of the books, despite their covers, focus on basic business acumen that has little to do with religion or culture. But others focus on explaining how Judaism has ostensibly helped Jewish people’s success, even quoting extensively from the Talmud.
Practically every book features one or more case studies of the success of the Lehman brothers, the Rothschilds and other Jewish “titans of industry and captains of finance,” as one author put it…
Positive stereotypes about Jews and their supposed business prowess have given the Jewish community iconic status in the eyes of the Chinese public.
The cover of January’s Shanghai and Hong Kong Economy magazine wonders, “Where does Jewish people’s wisdom come from?”
Jewish entrepreneurs say they are bombarded with invitations to give seminars on how to make money “the Jewish way.”
Exit question: What do our Jewish readers think? Creepy or no?
