General Chen Bingde China's Chief of Staff will be visiting Israel as the guest of Israel's Chief of Staff Benny Ganz. The visit comes on the heels of a trip to China by Israel's minister of defense Ehud Barak. In May,Admiral Wu Shengli of the PLA Navy a service that the Chinese are building up rapidly visited Israel.
Israeli-Chinese relations were marred in 2000 when Barak was Prime Minister. Israel was forced to cancel a sale of Phalcon aircraft to China the poor man's AIWAC early warning plane because it presumably incorporated American technology. China then assumed that Israel could not act independently of the US.
This is the last leg of a three nation visit by the Chinese Chief of Staff that has also taken him to Russia and the Ukraine where he witnessed joint maneuvers between China, Russia and the Ukraine.
The visit to Israel has touched off speculation with some viewing it as a response to growing Islamic separatism in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
Another theory is that China wants to hedge its bets given the shaky status of its former allies in the Arab world.