China’s Notoriously Combative Diplomat Is Getting Sidelined

A more powerful China has brought with it a brand of assertive—some say bellicose—foreign policy called “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, and few diplomats are as visible as Zhao Lijian, a brash spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry and its most prolific Twitter user. 

Zhao has promoted unfounded theories that COVID originated in the U.S. to his 1.9 million followers on the platform, and tweeted a digital illustration showing an Australian soldier preparing to slit an Afghan boy’s throat, following a report on Australian special forces’ war crimes in Afghanistan. He won praise in China for using his megaphone—on Twitter as well as in his day job—to stick it to the West, including by lashing out at foreign reporters for asking “malicious questions.” Other Chinese diplomats took cue from his success, adopting a combative style that has changed how the world sees China.

But as the chaotic explosion of COVID has humbled the Chinese government, the leader of the wolf pack is in retreat.

Earlier this week, Zhao was delisted as a spokesperson in the Chinese foreign ministry’s website. He has been named instead as a deputy director of the ministry’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, a relatively obscure department responsible for developing policies on maritime boundaries.

“It does not look like a promising next step for him in his career,” Bill Bishop, author of Sinocism, a newsletter that analyzes Chinese current affairs, told VICE World News. “I can’t find anybody in China who thinks this is not a demotion, given how careers progress inside the foreign ministry and the trajectory of previous foreign ministry spokesmen.” 

Chinese officials in Zhao’s high-profile former role usually go up the hierarchy. This includes Qin Gang, who became Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. in 2021 and succeeded Wang Yi as foreign minister last week. 

Some observers have perceived Zhao’s reassignment as a sign of a thaw in bilateral ties between the U.S. and China and a reversal of its aggressive diplomatic posturing. Qin, the foreign minister, recently wrote in the Washington Post expressing optimism about China-U.S. relations.

“I can see multiple good reasons to move him, laterally, into a non-front-facing role for this rotation in order to take the heat off,” said Andrew Small, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. 

But some have suggested Beijing might have moved Zhao out of the public eye for more personal reasons.

Zhao’s wife, a Chinese businesswoman in Pakistan, has repeatedly raised eyebrows for her posts on Chinese social media. In November, she lamented the long hours and low pay of foreign ministry spokespeople. When Zhao contracted COVID last month, after the country abruptly ended its “zero-COVID” policy and lifted most pandemic curbs, she complained about China’s shortage of medicine—a slap in the face for a country that has repeatedly touted its superior management of the pandemic compared to Western governments.

In November, Zhao’s critics mocked him for struggling to answer a question about the historic protests against lockdown measures that preceded the reversal of the country’s COVID policy. At the regular press briefing, he fell into an awkward, minute-long silence following the question from a reporter.

While Chinese nationalists have cheered on Zhao in the past, some social media users now accuse him of tarnishing China’s reputation. “He was the one smearing China’s image,” read a top comment on Weibo on a news report about Zhao’s reappointment.

Zhao and the Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Dan Mattingly, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University, said China may have sidelined its most outspoken wolf warrior diplomat as party leaders realized that Zhao’s messaging was not effective. In his recent study, Mattingly found that Chinese diplomats’ Twitter posts attacking the country’s critics could generate backlash among foreign audiences.

But despite Zhao’s removal, he has left a lasting imprint on the Chinese diplomatic corp, Mattingly said. “In some ways Zhao won the larger battle. The lite version of Wolf Warrior posturing is now common for most Chinese diplomats, who have to show the home office that they are patriots and party loyalists who will take a firm stand against the West,” Mattingly said. 

Rhetoric aside, there’s so far little indication that China is changing its foreign policy, Bishop said.

“Maybe we’ll have less aggressive, hooligan-like comments from the foreign ministry,” said Bishop, who was blocked by Zhao on Twitter after he said China deserves a better spokesperson.

“But there’s nothing in the sort of official discourse that would indicate any sort of a fundamental shift in their approach to foreign policy.”

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