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Concept
History of the Jews in China
Summary
Jews and Judaism in China are predominantly composed of Sephardi Jews and their descendants. Other Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews and a number of converts.
The Jewish Chinese community manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions and it also encompasses the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance. Though a small minority, Chinese Jews have had an open presence in the country since the arrival of the first Jewish immigrants during the 8th century CE. Relatively isolated communities of Jews developed from ancient all the way to modern China, most notably the Kaifeng Jews (the term "Chinese Jews" is often used in a restricted sense in order to refer to these communities).
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish merchants from around the world began to trade in Chinese ports, particularly in the commercial centres of Hong Kong, which was for a time a British colony; Shanghai (the International Settlement and French Concession); and Harbin (the Trans-Siberian Railway). In the first half of the 20th century, thousands of Jewish refugees escaping from pogroms in the Russian Empire arrived in China. By the time of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, only a few Jews were known to have maintained the practice of their religion and culture.
The presence of a community of Jewish immigrants in China arguably began sometime in the Song Dynasty though a number of scholars have argued for their presence there in earlier Tang dynasty times. In the 9th century, the Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh noted the travels of Jewish merchants called Radhanites, whose trade took them to China via the Silk Road through Central Asia and India. He mentioned the presence of Jewish merchants in a number of Chinese cities, and the important economic role they played transporting merchandise as well as transmitting scientific and technological expertise by land and sea all the way from Spain and France via the Middle East to China.
Official source
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