[President Biden is in office now,
and despite his softer style, he looks set to push China on issues related to the coronavirus and more. Calls for
countries to boycott the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics show no sign
of dissipating any time soon, while China’s vaccine diplomacy efforts have been
complicated by reports of low efficacy and new waves.]
By Adam Taylor
Chinese officials should create a
“trustworthy, lovable and respectable” national image, Xi said Monday, according to Bloomberg News, adding that
China needed to “be open and confident, but also modest and humble.”
Xi’s remarks, made to Chinese
officials at a Politburo meeting and featured prominently in Xinhua state news agency, raised more than a few skeptical
eyebrows among China watchers.
But in some ways, they also made a
lot of sense. China’s international relations have frayed significantly over
the past years, with issues like the repression of the Uyghur ethnic minority
in Xinjiang, aggressive rhetoric and action against Taiwan, India and Hong Kong
activists and relentless obfuscation over the coronavirus darkening China’s global image.
Deep in this fray were “the wolf
warriors,” a team that included Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian and an
assortment of ambassadors and diplomats around the world. Unsurprisingly, most
available evidence suggests that their style of hyperaggressive diplomacy
wasn’t winning friends.
China’s reputation in the West has
plunged of late. In a Pew Research Center survey of 14 countries released in
October, a majority of respondents gave a negative appraisal of China. Negative
views reached decade highs in nine of those countries. This decline in China’s
international image took place during a period in which the United States was
led by a globally unpopular leader whose policies of “America
First” drew little support outside U.S. borders and record hostility within.
President Biden is in office now,
and despite his softer style, he looks set to push China on issues related to the coronavirus and more. Calls for
countries to boycott the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics show no sign
of dissipating any time soon, while China’s vaccine diplomacy efforts have been
complicated by reports of low efficacy and new waves.
Writing for Foreign Policy, Tufts University’s Sulmaan Wasif Khan argued that the
wolf warriors had disrupted China’s “grand strategy” and posed a real domestic
risk. “The real danger is that once toxin has spread through the system, there
is no knowing where it will end,” Khan wrote.
There’s good reason many are
skeptical about a real change. The wolf warriors may be
controversial abroad, but they are broadly popular at home. And what if they
are not the root cause of China’s aggressive foreign policy, but a symptom?
The name “wolf warrior” comes from
an ultrapatriotic and hugely popular 2015 action film, along
with its 2017 sequel, which features Chinese elite soldiers helping to protect
the country from its foes. When a handful of Chinese diplomats, most notably
Zhao, began acting more assertively on Twitter, they gained comparisons to the
Rambo-like heroes of the film.
Outside of China, it wasn’t exactly
a compliment. When Zhao, then the deputy chief of mission at the Chinese
Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, tweeted criticisms of the United States in 2019 alleging
racial segregation in Washington, among other ailments, he was mocked and
ridiculed.
After being called a “racist
disgrace” by Susan Rice, formerly President Barack Obama’s national security
adviser, Zhao fired back that, in fact, it was Rice who was a “disgrace.” He
added that the “truth hurts” before deleting the offending messages.
To outsiders, it seemed
embarrassing and humbling. And when it was announced soon after that Zhao would
be leaving Pakistan, many assumed it was due to his persistently controversial
takes on Twitter. (He had sometimes made things awkward with his hosts
there, too.)
Well, yes, but not in the way most
expected: He had been promoted. And soon, many in China’s Foreign Ministry were
aping Zhao’s undiplomatic style of diplomacy. Research from Yaoyao Dai and
Luwei Rose Luqiu published by The Monkey Cage last month found that an average of 10 percent of Foreign Ministry speeches were
“combative and hostile” before 2012. That increased to more than a quarter in
2019 and 2020.
The shift in tone was not limited
to lower-level officials. Foreign Minister Wang Yi responded to criticism about China’s repression of
Uyghurs by telling a webinar organized by the Munich Security Conference: “Our
European friends know what is genocide.”
And when Biden administration
officials first met with their Chinese counterparts this March, they were on
the receiving end of a 16-minute tirade criticizing America and accusing U.S. officials of speaking from a
position of hypocrisy and weakness.
The wolf warriors didn’t stop their
attacks during the pandemic. Zhao spread baseless theories that
the U.S. military could have been behind the coronavirus pandemic that first
emerged in Wuhan, China — a notion so bold that some other Chinese diplomats seemed to distance
themselves from it.
But increasing international
pressure for an investigation into the coronavirus′s origins in China, following
Biden’s call for a new assessment of intelligence into the once-discounted
lab-leak theory, shows one downside to hyperdefensive
diplomacy: It makes it look like you have something to hide.
Moreover, China is entangled in a
variety of ugly disputes with countries it once got along with politely.
Relations with the European Union broke down amid disputes over Xinjiang, effectively ending plans for a
trade and investment treaty. Relations with Australia and India have broken
down, with the latter in a small-scale but very real border conflict with
China last year.
Taiwan, meanwhile, with its softer diplomatic style of “cat diplomacy,” seemed to be gaining where China was
failing.
In 2016, Xi had publicly called for
a “dare-to-fight”
spirit when promoting Chinese interests. His new remarks appear to suggest that period
is over, but some analysts view the idea cautiously. At the China Media
Project, David Bandurski voiced doubts about any substantive change, arguing that those at
the Politburo event probably viewed things another way.
“The West must be persuaded to see
things China’s way,” Bandurski wrote, summarizing their views. “And to this
end, confrontation, the crossing of swords, will likely remain as a core
component of communication as conceived by the leadership.”
In their research, Dai and Luqiu
found that the wolf warriors’ tough talk was often a substitute for tough action, leading nationalistic
netizens to proclaim victory and appealing to the poorer countries that are
often more skeptical of the United States.
Moreover, it was not rude tweets
that brought China’s international standing into disrepute. It is Xi’s actual
policies of repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, or the systematic embrace of
secrecy and paranoia that may make finding the cause of the coronavirus
impossible, that disrupt its relations abroad.
Keeping a tighter leash on the wolf
warriors may not spell better international relations for China. And unless
there are significant policy changes elsewhere, their howling seems likely to
continue.
Read more:
The pandemic is getting worse, even when it seems like it’s getting better
China’s
‘three-child’ policy and the new age of demographic anxiety
For
Biden, it’s back to the future in the Middle East
