When China unleashes its "wolf soldiers" on the diplomatic scene

For five years, China has had its own Rambo. And his name is Leng Feng. Throughout two testosterone-boosted films, "Wolf Warrior" ("Wolf Soldier", 2015) and "Wolf Warrior 2" (2017), he fights against evil Americans, frees Chinese hostage, and rescues 'other compatriots imprisoned in Africa ... This success at the Chinese box office went completely unnoticed by the Western public. Wrongly… Not because of the questionable quality of the script, but because it foreshadowed a shift in Chinese politics on the international scene, which became impossible to ignore at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic and the political crisis in Hong Kong. 

This evolution is perfectly summarized by the final image of "Wolf Warrior 2": a Chinese passport accompanied by the message "Chinese citizen, if you are in danger in a foreign country, do not give up! Remember that you can count on a powerful mother country. " This is in essence what Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi said on Sunday, May 31, before an audience of journalists, saying that his country "would [henceforth] respond to any insult and defend its honor and its dignity everywhere. "

Young wolves with long teeth

The Minister was answering a question about the meaning to be given to the new "wolf warrior diplomacy". Because the film rubbed off on reality in the form of a pack of young diplomats quickly nicknamed by Western observers the "wolf soldiers" of Beijing for their aggressive ways of conveying diplomatic messages.

There is Zhao Lijan, a former diplomatic attaché in Pakistan, who has become the star spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who has nothing to envy the American president, Donald Trump, for his propensity to tweet faster than his shadow. He is one of the main proponents of the conspiracy theory that the United States is responsible for the coronavirus epidemic. Thursday, June 3, he put the United Kingdom in its place, saying it had no say in the Hong Kong file.

The Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye does not have his tongue in his pocket either. In April, at the height of the health crisis, he violently attacked the staff of the nursing homes, accusing them of abandonment of post. His colleague in post in Sweden, Gui Congyo came under fire from critics in April after attacking media deemed too critical of Beijing. The Chinese diplomat had allowed himself to compare Swedish journalists to "lightweight" boxers who are trying to get into the ring against "a heavyweight".

It would be easy to consider these young wolves as snipers who decided on their own to free themselves from "traditional Chinese diplomacy", as Bilahari Kausikan, a diplomat from Singapore who split from a long essay on the Chinese "wolf soldiers" in the Canadian diplomatic magazine Global Brief. The traditional Chinese diplomatic posture, theorized by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, being that of advancing "without revealing its true strength". 

Xi Jinping, the Alpha Wolf

But these long-toothed diplomats "do not act without the approval of the party," says Mareike Ohlberg, China specialist at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, contacted by France 24. As evidenced by Lu Shaye's career , who, after practicing "wolf warrior" diplomacy in Canada, ended up in Paris, which is considered a promotion.

In reality the alpha wolf of this pack is none other than President Xi Jinping. He does not publicly show his fangs, but "since the start of his second term in 2017, Xi Jinping has undertaken a radicalization of Chinese foreign policy," said Jean-Philippe Béja, a sinologist at the Center for International Research (CERI) of Sciences-Po Paris, contacted by France 24. 

The Beijing master considers that "the time has come for China to show its strength to regain its rightful place on the international scene and, to do this, it has decided to put aside the precepts of Deng Xiaoping", says the French political scientist. 

In this perspective, the small group of "wolf warriors" ambassadors is only the foam of the Chinese diplomatic wave. "These are a few young executives who want to be seen by the chef," says Jean-Philippe Béja.

The ambition of this change of posture on the international scene is much broader, and at the same time, more personal. After having established his power during his first mandate, "Xi Jinping intends to consolidate his position of leader by realizing one of the big dreams for the Chinese, namely to arise in great international power", summarizes the sinologist of CERI. It is therefore a "new" diplomatic attitude with an internal aim.

Covid-19 accelerated the process

This development initially went unnoticed, because the new aggressiveness on the international scene was mainly expressed through diplomatic surgical strikes. For Mareike Ohlberg, of the German Marshall Fund, Beijing "chose these targets to make examples, while keeping a generally traditional diplomatic attitude". But the Covid-19 pandemic "accelerated the process, forcing China to adopt a crisis communication," said the German political scientist. 

Suddenly, Beijing faced a barrage of criticism, especially from a Donald Trump more anti-Chinese than ever. The regime then no longer had the luxury of choosing its fights and it resolved to deploy its new diplomatic doctrine on a large scale. 

This approach has another advantage for the party, according to Mareike Ohlberg. It makes it possible to designate enemies abroad, in order to rally the population around common adversaries to fight "in this period of uncertainty", she notes.

This diplomacy of the "soldier wolf" can evolve in two directions, according to her. One of the hypotheses is that it is pushing China to adopt an increasingly casual attitude towards international opinion. This scenario is all the more plausible for Mareike Ohlberg as "the development of the crisis in Hong Kong illustrates this posture". 

But it may also be that once the health crisis has passed, the regime whistles for the end of recess, and "reduce the number of countries towards which it is aggressive, to adopt a more accommodating general diplomatic attitude", notes Mareike Ohlberg. China is indeed undergoing a "beginning of backlash, with the multiplication of convocations of ambassadors in several countries", notes Jean-Philippe Béja. The unprecedented decision by several African country ambassadors to China to write a joint letter on April 11 to complain about the treatment suffered by their compatriots in China shows that this diplomatic radicalization "may have gone too fast and too far ", estimates the French sinologist. Xi Jinping may not want to sacrifice good Sino-African understanding and the resulting economic benefits to satisfy the appetite of a few "wolf soldiers".

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