China Wants Howling Diplomats to Quiet Down, but Nationalism Gets in the Way
China’s leadership is straining to dial back its country’s chest-thumping “Wolf Warrior” approach to foreign policy, afraid it has begun to undermine the country’s interests, according to people familiar with the matter.
The effort has been impaired by nationalist fervor in the country, the people said, which is only intensifying as the party marks the 100th anniversary of its founding this week.
The Wolf Warrior ethos—named after a nationalistic Chinese film franchise about a Rambo-like action hero who battles American-led mercenary groups—took hold among China’s previously staid diplomats during the Trump administration as they responded to what Beijing saw as spurious Western attacks on China. Much of the new approach has played out on Twitter, where diplomats have fired off a barrage of barbs, threats and conspiracy theories, many of them targeting the U.S.
High-level meetings about moderating China’s aggressive diplomacy date to April, motivated by concern that the strategy has alienated the U.S. and other countries in ways that risk isolating the Chinese economy.
While Chinese Foreign Ministry officials were previously cold to the idea of a face-to-face meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and President Biden, they have recently discussed the possibility of arranging such a meeting at the Group of 20 summit scheduled for October in Rome, according to the people. The hope is that a meeting would calm tensions between the two estranged global powers, they said.
The Foreign Ministry is taking steps to pull back on the aggression, including by drafting guidelines for diplomats on the use of Twitter, but officials involved fear that too obvious a softening could incur the wrath of legions of nationalist internet users, who have become a potent force in Chinese politics, according to the people.
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Mr. Xi himself has issued mixed signals. In a May meeting with senior party officials, he urged efforts to cultivate a “credible, lovable and respectable” image for China abroad. At the same time, the people say, he has maintained demands that diplomats show “fighting spirit” as they defend the country against insults.
Some Chinese diplomats have chosen to follow the latter message and continue to bark insults in posts on Western social-media platforms.
“This is a tough job,” one of the people said, pointing to the leadership’s orders to tone down the aggressive diplomacy while avoiding behavior that might be seen by either top officials or the public as worshiping America or “kneeling down before America.”
The conundrum highlights the difficulty Beijing faces as it navigates the increasing contrast between the Communist Party’s reputation at home and how it is perceived abroad.
The party’s popularity inside China has been boosted over the past year by the country’s success in fighting Covid-19, a robust economy and a propaganda campaign that portrays Mr. Xi as a great helmsman charting the country’s inevitable rejuvenation.
Preparations for this week’s centenary celebration seek to capitalize on that momentum. Feisty slogans and patriotic floral arrangements have sprung up around Beijing and other cities. Authorities recently inaugurated a new Communist Party museum in Beijing and have sought to whip up public appetite for new movies and television series that dramatize the party’s revolutionary past.
Mr. Xi is expected to deliver a speech on July 1, the designated anniversary date, to hammer home the party’s message that is an indispensable guarantor of China’s rise.
At the same time, mounting conflicts abroad threaten to undermine Mr. Xi’s efforts to transform China into the global power broker that many Chinese believe it deserves to be.
Bilateral clashes over human rights, technology and the origins of Covid-19 that began under President Donald Trump have continued under Mr. Biden, who has sought better coordination with allies in pressuring Beijing. Opinion polls published earlier this year showed American views of China becoming increasingly unfavorable, with nine in 10 Americans seeing China as a competitor or enemy.
Since Chinese officials began discussing diplomatic adjustments, Beijing has veered back and forth between seeking to soften its image and baring its teeth.
Mr. Xi addressed a U.S.-led climate summit in April, signaling a willingness to engage with Mr. Biden. Top Chinese diplomats and state media spoke in recent weeks about the need to avoid conflict with Washington.
People familiar with the matter said the Chinese Foreign Ministry started developing social-media guidelines for diplomats after Mr. Xi told top party officials in May that China should expand its “circle of friends in international public opinion” and urged officials to “pay attention to the strategy and art of waging struggles over public opinion.”
Separately, officials have been studying how other countries manage foreign media, including the use of legal tools to force the removal of perceived falsehoods, and urged state-media reporters overseas to promote Beijing’s narratives on social media, people familiar with those efforts said.
The Communist Party has also invited hundreds of political parties from around the world to join an online conference in early July that Mr. Xi will address, people briefed on the plans said, similar to the 2017 World Political Parties Dialogue that Mr. Xi hosted in Beijing.
But Chinese diplomats have told foreign counterparts that they don’t intend to back down from any fight where China’s sovereignty and interests are challenged, according to people familiar with these conversations.
Responding to Mr. Biden’s renewed focus on the possibility that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab, Chinese diplomats have used Twitter to revive unsupported allegations that the virus came from a U.S. facility.
Zhang Heqing, the cultural counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, posted a tweet last week that read, “the way we treat our friends, and the way we deal with enemies,” along with an image depicting two hands. One gave a thumbs-up above the Chinese words for “credible, lovable and respectable,” and the other extended a middle finger above the characters for Wolf Warrior. The tweet has since been removed.
China’s ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, defended Wolf Warrior diplomacy in a recent interview, saying the approach represents a legitimate defense against Western criticism and one that the world should get used to.
“Westerners criticize us for deviating from diplomatic protocol,” but Chinese diplomats judge their work based on whether “our people are satisfied or not,” he said in remarks published by Guanchazhe, a Chinese commentary website known for propagating nationalistic views.
