China’s Wolf Warrior Punishment – Global Isolation

Sometime in the early 1980s, there was a David Bowie number ‘China Girl’ which had racist connotations. This was roughly also the time when China was making its transition from Mao to Deng. And from socialism with Chinese characteristics to capitalism with Chinese characteristics. Four decades later, the world has reconfigured with China as the second pole after the United States. Given its awe-inspiring achievements, no one would have thought of inflicting that pejorative number in the present context on the Chinese. Until COVID-19 that is. 

On Wednesday, the British parliament had a bipartisan panel recommend sanctions against China for its human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet. The Shadow Minister for Asia and Pacific and Labor MP Stephen Kinnock called for a fundamental reset in the British-Chinese relationship in the backdrop of what China was doing in the two regions. Kinnock among others is a member of the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) – an international cross-party group of legislators working to reform the approach of democratic countries to China that shaped up in the backdrop of the global spread of COVID- that has already called for sanctions and reset of their respective government’s engagements with China. Same day, during the general debate at the United Nations, Germany spoke on behalf of 39 nations, appraising China's conduct in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, asking it to respect human rights, and calling for political asylum to Uyghar refugees persecuted by China.

The negative perception of China

A day earlier, on Tuesday, October 6, United States-based Pew Research Centre released a study from mostly Western nations on how people looked at China and the views were not flattering. In nine of the surveyed countries- Sweden, the Netherlands, USA, Australia, United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Germany, and Spain – negative perception of China reached its highest level in over a decade, including doubts about Xi Jinping's integrity.   

Last month, China was in a public spat with the tiny eastern European nation Czech Republic, over the visit of its Senate president Milos Vystrcil with a delegation to Taiwan. The Chinese ministry of foreign affairs described the trip as “an unendurable provocation for which there will be retribution.” The statement quoted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying that “the Chinese will make the Czech leader pay a heavy price.” Apart from an official demarche to the Chinese ambassador in Prague, the Czech foreign minister Tomas Petricek chided Yi for his intemperate language on twitter. 

A month before in August, on his first foreign trip after Wuhan born Coronavirus struck the world, Wang Yi’s first port of call on a whirlwind Europe trip started with a glitch. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte slipped out of Rome for a break and chose to speak to Yi on phone instead. A statement released by his office mentioned Hong Kong ahead of China-EU relations as one of the issues discussed. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was completely missing from the readout.

Significant because Italy had become the first country to join the Xi Jinping inspired massive infrastructure project, in good measure contributing to the region of Lombardy becoming the world’s first Corona hotspot outside China with dire consequences. In the joint press conference in Rome, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio spoke in what sounded like reading the riot act on Hong Kong. “Italy would be monitoring closely the implications of new Chinese security measures in Hong Kong,” Luigi said. 

One would think such widespread reprimands would chasten Chinese leadership and make them respond with some humility and accommodation. What we see instead is a brinkmanship not seen in the world of diplomacy since the time of John Foster Dulles. Faced with increasing world pressure in March, Lijian Zhao, Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing had this in your face answer: If someone claims that China’s exports are toxic, then stop wearing China-made masks and protective gowns, or using China-exported ventilators. This way you will stay clear from the virus. The political virus is more terrible than COVID-19! 

As Australia demanded an independent probe into the origins of the virus, China slapped an 80 percent tariff on imports of Barley from the southern Pacific nation using economic coercion measures in aide of diplomacy. It is significant that Australia decided to stand its ground despite China accounting for 38% of all its exports, risking a major part of its economy in these difficult times. Faced with the prospect of extradition of Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei founder to the United States on the technology theft charge, China has responded by arresting two Canadian citizens in what is being called as abduction diplomacy.

According to a Canadian think tank poll in late June, a majority of respondents felt boycotting Chinese goods would send a strong message of disapproval to China. Responding to the public mood, the Trudeau administration dropped free trade negotiations with China in September. Canadian Foreign Minister Francois Philippe Champagne told The Globe and Mail newspaper: "The China of 2020 is not China of 2016. Ottawa will review its policy towards Beijing and will do so through the lens of China in 2020." 

Australia might be an American satellite, and Canada part of the ‘five-eyes’ intelligence-sharing western network, but what of Russia? Ideological friend and brother? Even Putin has not been spared with the neighbours having a tiff over the transit of Chinese expats at the border town of Suifenhe in April, returning from Russian towns under COVID lockdown. And in July, the Russian embassy in Beijing faced flak for tweeting ‘history of Vladivostok’ – the famous far east Russian port, with official Chinese media claiming it was Chinese territory till 1860, making it a possible target of Chinese irredentism in the future! Germany became the first European nation to announce an Indo-Pacific policy, in a clear message of disapproval of Chinese actions with Hong Kong and Taiwan last month. 

On May 10, Chinese broadcast network CGTN tweeted that the Mount Everest peak lay on the Chinese side in Tibet and not Nepal, before hastily deleting it. A few days later reports emerged of China having unilaterally moved border pillars at the boundary of about 11 Nepal villages to expand Chinese territory, leading to protests outside its embassy in Kathmandu. In June, China staked claim over the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary in Trashigang district of Eastern Bhutan at the United Nations' Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council and opposed funding to the project. For perspective, the sanctuary is located at a lower latitude than India's Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh to the east.  

If this still sounds decent what of tiny Tahiti in the southern Pacific? In 2018, the Chinese embassy rented a private residence for locating its consular premises. On the expiry of the lease agreement the owner wanted it vacated. China flatly refused, offering to buy out the property instead. Apparently, the Chinese had built some tech surveillance infrastructure and radar facilities on the property and did not wish to relocate, despite an offer of an alternative site by the Tahitian government! Now, who bullies a poor private citizen of a small island nation? We have not even mentioned the belligerence that nations in South East Asia have come to live with when it comes to China. The tiff with Japan on the Senkaku island to the drying up of Mekong countries, from sinking a Vietnamese frigate to bullying Indonesia and the Philippines in the South China Seas, all have been reported in-depth over the last few months. 

Deng Xiaoping's famous paraphrasing of a Chinese proverb- Hide your strength, bide your time – was aimed at buying peace in an increasingly unipolar world with America as the global hegemon. The idea was to grow without getting into confrontations that could prove expensive, both in the neighbourhood and afar. This was 1990. That perhaps explains all the boundary agreements beginning in 1993 that China signed with India.

Under Xi Jinping thought, China seems to have outgrown Deng’s dictum, with the Middle Kingdom’s wolf warrior diplomats breaking every rule in the book of international relations worth breaking as we have seen. One statistic that perhaps explains the changed stance is China’s goods trade with the rest of the world. While it stood at above 60 percent at the turn of the century, it has come down to 35 per cent in 2018, meaning China depends more on the domestic than the global market to sustain its economy. 

The term wolf-warrior diplomacy comes from the 2015 Chinese action flick Wolf Warrior, and its 2017 sequel. The protagonist Leng Feng is a well-meaning special forces outlaw who gets punished for indiscipline before release and resurrection as a special mission commando. In real life, China seems to have jettisoned Deng, pushing the envelope on international rules-based order thinking its time has come. Guess what was the punishment for Leng Feng? Solitary confinement.