Brill’s Encyclopedia of China

When diplomatic relations were first established between the PRC and Japan on September 29, 1972, leading politicians on both sides repeatedly emphasized their commitment to the normalization of bilateral relations. At first, this desire for normalization was met with a certain degree of success. Nonetheless, new tensions during the 1980s demonstrated clearly that, despite partially successful normalization, the relations between the two states were developing in a way that amounted to a return …

Jewish merchants may have come to China as early as the 8th or 9th century, but they apparently neither remained nor established a community. The first concrete evidence of several Jewish communities comes from the inscribed stelae, dated 1489, 1512, 1663, and 1679, erected at the synagogue in Kaifeng, Henan province. According to these, Jews apparently arrived in China's capital, Kaifeng, sometime around 1120, before the outbreak of hostilities between the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) and i…