The role of Confucianism in the Chinese society has gone through tremendous changes in the past century. After years of direct attacks against Confucianism by the Chinese Communists, Confucianism is on a comeback, and surprisingly enough it is now made mainstream by the Communist Party itself which is promoting Confucian studies and research in China and world-wide. Wikipedia gives a good introduction :

Confucianism (Traditional Chinese: 儒學; Simplified Chinese: 儒学; pinyin: Rúxué [ Listen (help·info) ], literally "The School of the Scholars"; or 孔教 Kŏng jiào, "The Teachings of Confucius") is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of the early Chinese sage Confucius. It is a complex system of moral, social, political, and religious thought …

China’s business culture is very different than how business is conducted anywhere else, with the world is still trying to figure out what Chinese culture means and the ingredients for business success in China. With the recent visit of the Israeli PM to China, newspapers were full of articles about China and the Chinese culture, some of them including tips for the PM on how he should approach China.
One of the more intriguing articles I read was in Haaretz’s TheMarker, quoting 10 business tips professor Larry Franklin had for Olmert with "Things Olmert should know about China". I’ve heard about Franklin before, and in a positive context. Here’s a little about Larry Franklin from an article …

In almost all of my class discussions there is a general assumption that Democracy is what’s good for China. Especially when it comes to discussing urban China and the modern changes in society the question of whether this is good for bringing democracy to China always comes up, usually accompanied with the hope that China will soon realize its mistake and abandon Communism in favor of the western Democracy. They might be right, they might be wrong, but somehow - this bothers me each time, and after one of the classes I even took the time to share my thoughts with the lecturer on e-mail:

It is quite understandable that Israelis, and the west in general, have very clear ideas about …

Dongdong is a Chinese documentary film director who fell in love with an Israeli in China and came to live in Israel. Qin left her daughter in China and came to Israel to make a living and after cleaning Ehud’s house they fell in love and got married. These are two of the characters in a touching documentary film I saw yesterday at the Jerusalem Cinemateq.

We meet several characters meet in a Hebrew language Ulpan, where their personal stories meld with the complexities of Israeli reality. The immense effort of learning a new language is revealed through their encounter with a strange culture and unfamiliar environment. The foreigner’s gaze, at times funny, at times sad, paints daily Israeli reality …

In the past three weeks, I have been touring some of the main tourist attractions around Israel. It was the first time I’ve ever taken the time to actually tour Israel on my own, and in a way it has somewhat bothered me that I probably knew more about Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand than I did about Jerusalem and Israel. Although during December, we were lucky to enjoy beautiful cool weather most of the time and experience quite a few Israeli style adventures.
 
Here’s a little taste of what we’ve seen and where we’ve been to:
Around Jerusalem
Christmas in Jerusalem - Dormizion Abbey

Jerusalem - Ein Carem …

China is becoming more active in regard to the conflict in the middle east. Ever since the the Israel-Lebanon war and the discussion concerning the new nuclear threat from Iran, China has been taking a more active role at the UN and the international media.

The Wok, an Israeli blog in Hebrew about China, covered the recent conference held in China regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and gave some interesting links in Chinese government announcements and media about Israel-China relations and the event :
The official gov.cn

China holds that Israel and Palestine should take concrete measures in maintaining ceasefire and the current situation, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister ZhaiJun …