History of the Jews in China
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 2,500 (2014) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Shanghai, Beijing | |
| Languages | |
| Hebrew, English, Chinese | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism |
Jews and Judaism in China have had a long history. Jewish settlers are documented in China as early as the 7th or 8th century CE. Relatively isolated communities developed through the Tang and Song Dynasties (7th to 12th centuries CE) all the way through the Qing Dynasty (19th century), most notably in the Kaifeng Jews (the term "Chinese Jews" is often used in a restricted sense to refer to these communities). By the time of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, few if any native Chinese Jews were known to have maintained the practice of their religion and culture . In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, some international Jewish groups have helped Chinese Jews rediscover their heritage.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish merchants from around the world began to trade in Chinese ports, particularly in the commercial centers 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 the 1917 Russian Revolution arrived in China.
China's Jewish communities have been ethnically diverse ranging from the Jews of Kaifeng and other places during the history of Imperial China, who, it is reported, came to be more or less totally assimilated into Chinese culture, to 19th- and 20th-century Ashkenazi Jews, to Baghdadis, to Indians.
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