Chinese Whispers: what do the 'wolf warrior' diplomats want?

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🗓️ 3 August 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Earlier this year, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson gave credence to the conspiracy theory that the US military took coronavirus to China. It's just one example of a new school of diplomacy that has dominated Chinese foreign policy - the 'wolf warriors'. But does this approach work, or does it merely antagonise the world? Professor Todd Hall is a Chinese foreign policy expert at Oxford University, and tells Cindy Yu about what the wolf warriors say about China's view of the world.

A fortnightly podcast on the latest in Chinese politics, society, and more. Presented by Cindy Yu. Listen to past episodes here.

Subscribe to the Spectator's first podcast newsletter here and get each week's podcast highlights in your inbox every Tuesday.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get 12 weeks of The Spectator in print and online for just £12.
0:05.2	And we'll give you a £20 £20 Amazon Give Voucher, absolutely free.
0:10.0	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:19.0	Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu.
0:22.7	Every episode I'll be talking to experts, journalists and longtime China watchers
0:27.1	about the country's politics, society and more.
0:30.2	There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge
0:33.2	and some contextualization.
0:35.4	How do the Chinese see these issues?
0:38.7	So I hope you'll join me every other Monday.
0:39.2	The Wolf Warrior.
0:50.3	No, it's not a sequel to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Rather, the phrase is what both
0:55.4	Chinese and Western media have used to dub a new generation of Chinese diplomats, inspired
1:00.3	by the propagandistic Wolf Warrior films. Now, these diplomats are firebrands. They're
1:05.2	afraid to speak their mind. And you might already be familiar with the work of Zhao Li Jian,
1:10.0	the infamous foreign ministry spokesperson, who earlier this year tweeted, it might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.
1:16.8	Be transparent, exclamation mark.
1:18.9	Make public your data, exclamation mark.
1:21.6	The US owes us an explanation, another exclamation mark.
1:25.6	Well, I think we all need an explanation for why this counts as diplomacy for the second largest economy in the world.
1:31.6	And joining me on the podcast today is Professor Todd Hu, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the University of Oxford.
1:38.3	So Todd, to start with, can you explain why and how these wolf warriors have come about?
	...

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