In late April, the meeting between Hamas and Fatah hosted in Beijing garnered a great deal of attention from the international community. The prospects of internal reconciliation of the Palestine factions after more than a 17-year split may not offer an immediate solution to the Gaza crisis, but Beijing sees the unity and capacity of Palestine as an indispensable condition for the long-term success of achieving a Palestinian state. 

Even before the Gaza crisis, China’s view of Hamas and Fatah has differed. On the one hand, China is increasingly seeing Hamas as a legitimate political force in Palestine’s future and statehood. Refusing to condemn Hamas or describe it as a terrorist organization, the Chinese have used UN General Assembly Resolution 3070 to justify its determination. According to the director general from the Department of Treaty and International Law at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, that resolution “reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle.” This, in China's view, could be interpreted as a legal justification for the Palestinians in combating the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. 

The Gaza crisis more broadly reaffirmed to China Hamas’ presence, influence and popular support as a political entity, leading to their conclusion that Hamas cannot be excluded from the political process. This led, before the Fatah-Hamas meeting in China last month, to a rare publicized meeting in March between a senior Chinese official and a Hamas official in Doha.

An evolved view of Hamas