The Economist: Chinese wolf wankers alienate all

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Via The Economist:

It is not hard to find Chinese who cheer the foreign ministry’s pugnacious new style. Against that, some members of China’s foreign-policy establishment express alarm over this assertiveness, calling it a mistake born of inexperience. That is letting foreign ministry hotheads off too easily. A well-travelled bunch, China’s quarrel-picking diplomats know how they sound. They are using aggression as a signal that China has grown strong, and is tired of waiting for the world to show respect and deference. To diplomatic and national-security hawks in Beijing, if some countries have to feel pain in order to understand that China’s rise is inevitable and that resistance is futile (and that no help is coming from an America consumed with its own problems), then that pain is itself a useful education. Nor is this approach about to stop. Reporters at the annual meeting of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, asked the foreign minister, Wang Yi, about “Wolf Warrior diplomacy”. He did not endorse the term but embraced its spirit. China’s diplomats “never pick a fight or bully others, but we have principles and guts”, he said. “We will push back against any deliberate insult to resolutely defend our national honour and dignity.”

Leng the wolf warrior would only half approve. His China is not merely feared. It is admired because it is generous, in deed and in spirit. In the film, doctors at a Chinese-funded hospital have given their lives to develop a vaccine for a deadly virus. Tasked with rescuing Chinese workers from a remote factory, Leng brings their African wives and colleagues too, even lying that a local boy is his son to sneak him aboard a Chinese ship. The film is strikingly respectful of international law. A lantern-jawed naval commander launches missiles to save the day only when a radio operator shouts news from the Chinese ambassador: “Sir, we have received authorisation from the United Nations!” The film ends with a giant passport filling the screen, and a promise that China will use its strength to protect citizens in danger abroad. Some Chinese audiences so liked this magnanimous, self-confident vision of their country that they sang the national anthem in their cinema seats.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.