WIREDGOV

The recent return of China’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats has more to say about domestic pressures than about external challenges to China’s rise.

On 24 January, China’s Ministry of Defence announced it was investigating two members of the powerful Central Military Commission, the country’s supreme military leadership body. The removal of Zhang Youxia, China’s highest-ranking general, along with Liu Zhenli, leaves the Commission with merely two members (President Xi Jinping and one uniformed official) to head and manage China’s People’s Liberation Army. This internal fracture in China’s military apparatus contrasts with the recent external assertiveness of its foreign policy community.

Its culmination came last November, with the return of China’s infamous ‘wolf warriors’, confrontational diplomats who had made themselves first known through fiery rhetoric during the Covid pandemic. Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian posted the following tweet in response to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s position on military support for Taiwan: ‘The only thing to do is cut off a dirty neck without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready for that?’

Such language, combined with support from China’s Foreign Ministry, whose spokesperson asked, ‘Where does Japan intend to take China-Japan relations?’, successfully framed the debate in terms foreign to China’s domestic politics, shifting attention to the regional balance of power.

Yet this risks obscuring the deeper internal causes for Chinese diplomats’ ;initial reactions to Takaichi’s stance. Turning our attention to China’s politics in analysing this episode instead provides key insights: aggressive rhetoric provided relief for a foreign policy-making system under intense political pressure and thus serves as useful indication of the varying levels of constraint felt inside China.

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