The newscast blares from a television set in a Beijing apartment, carrying through an open window and echoing across the compound. The refrain is the same every evening: praise for China\u2019s handling of the coronavirus, dire scenes from foreign hospitals and condemnations of the United States.<\/p>\n
The tone is often withering. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo was declared \u201cthe public enemy of humanity.\u201d A few nights later, the anchor feigned sympathy for Americans, who she said were left to die while their government railed against China.<\/p>\n
Adv<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n Beijing has pushed this story line at home for months \u2014 a mixture of self-congratulation for defeating the virus, denial of central government missteps, and horror at other countries\u2019 failures to contain the pandemic.<\/p>\n Now, facing escalating international criticism over its handling of the outbreak and growing demands for an investigation into its origins, China has taken its strident nationalist message abroad. The strategy is provoking a backlash and colliding with President Trump’s insistence that China covered up the danger of the pathogen.<\/p>\n The undiplomatic invective matches the swagger of Xi Jinping\u2019s China, which is richer and more influential than ever, and determined to shape the global narrative as it believes a superpower should \u2014 especially as the Chinese president confronts\u00a0the biggest crisis\u00a0of his tenure. Beijing sees itself as ascendant at a time that the United States’ stature as a world leader is ebbing.<\/p>\n Chinese ambassadors are attacking foreign officials on social media and peddling misinformation \u2014 amplified by the state-controlled press \u2014 to deflect blame for the virus that has killed a quarter of a million people and wrecked global economies.<\/p>\n The latest spat erupted last week after the Chinese ambassador to Australia\u00a0appeared to threaten\u00a0a consumer boycott over Australia\u2019s calls for an independent inquiry into the outbreak. The Australian government accused Beijing, its biggest trading partner, of economic coercion; China denied it and warned Canberra to stop playing \u201cpolitical games.\u201d<\/p>\n The editor of Global Times, a popular tabloid run by the Chinese Communist Party, weighed in on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, comparing Australia to \u201cgum stuck to the bottom of China\u2019s shoe: Sometimes you have to find a rock and scrape it off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Rising to China\u2019s defense is a generation of diplomats and pundits dubbed the \u201cWolf Warriors,\u201d after a recent pair of\u00a0blockbuster action films\u00a0featuring a muscled, globe-trotting Chinese commando who vanquishes Asian drug lords, African pirates and mercenaries led by a villainous American named Big Daddy.<\/p>\n The diplomats\u2019 fields of battle are social media platforms \u2014 usually Twitter and Facebook, which are banned in China. Their weapons include outrage, sarcasm, an abiding suspicion of Western governments and the press, conspiracy theories and, it seems, the support of the Chinese leadership.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this environment in China, there\u2019s no punishment for people who are overzealous in defending China,\u201d said\u00a0Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King\u2019s College London. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to lose your job if you overstep. Everyone is trying to demonstrate their loyalty.\u201d<\/p>\n Wang Yong, professor of international studies at Peking University, called the \u201cmore assertive\u201d style of some diplomats \u201ca reaction to the blaming of China and China\u2019s policies in fighting the pandemic\u201d \u2014 especially by the United States.<\/p>\n U.S. news media have reported on China\u2019s initial attempts to\u00a0play down\u00a0the scale of the outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, and on\u00a0problems with medical equipment\u00a0it has sent to other countries. The allegations have blunted Beijing\u2019s own spin: that it has defeated the virus and is leading the medical and humanitarian response to the outbreak.<\/p>\n The Trump administration, under fire for\u00a0its own missteps, has increasingly emphasized the pandemic\u2019s origins. Pompeo has claimed the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory \u2014 which scientists say is unlikely \u2014 and said over the weekend that \u201cChina has a history of infecting the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe old way is to always accept: \u2018China does this, China does that,\u2019 an agenda set by American politicians,\u201d Wang said. \u201cI think now Americans should have a second thought about this approach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n A decade ago, Beijing\u2019s diplomats kept a low profile in world capitals \u2014 dark-suited sphinxes who rarely engaged with the press or the public. In the Wolf Warrior era \u2014 with China and the U.S. locked in a bitter struggle over\u00a0trade,\u00a0technological primacy\u00a0and\u00a0geopolitical influence\u00a0\u2014 their combative statements fly like arrows from embassies around the globe.<\/p>\n \u201cRidiculous and eyeball-catching nonsense,\u201d\u00a0tweeted\u00a0the spokeswoman for the Chinese Embassy in India, responding to demands that China pay compensation for the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n \u201cOther countries shouldn’t blame China for mistakes they have made themselves, particularly the U.S.,\u201d\u00a0tweeted\u00a0the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands.<\/p>\n The Chinese Embassy in Venezuela ended an angry Twitter thread \u2014 which began by complaining about Venezuelan officials referring to the \u201cChinese coronavirus\u201d \u2014 by\u00a0saying\u00a0that some of its critics could \u201cput on a mask and shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n Offensive and gratuitous, to some. But the Global Times, in\u00a0a recent article, said China\u2019s people \u201care no longer satisfied with a flaccid diplomatic tone.\u201d<\/p>\n The star among the Wolf Warriors is Zhao Lijian, a 47-year-old recently installed as a deputy spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Zhao came to prominence last year when, as the No. 2 at the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, he got into\u00a0a Twitter feud\u00a0with former U.S. national security advisor Susan Rice, who called him a \u201cracist disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n In March, Zhao\u00a0suggested on Twitter\u00a0that the U.S. Army had smuggled the virus into Wuhan. The unfounded conspiracy theory was echoed in state media, but raised eyebrows among more moderate members of China\u2019s diplomatic corps, including the ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai, who said it was \u201cvery harmful\u201d to speculate about the virus\u2019 origins.<\/p>\n \u201cLijian is representative of a group of younger spokespersons who are unapologetic,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThe mindset is not about keeping a low profile. They feel they shouldn\u2019t have to be in that position because they don\u2019t see Americans or Europeans going around the world bowing their heads and apologizing, so why should they?\u201d<\/p>\n Analysts say the pandemic has revealed China\u2019s willingness to expand its use of disinformation campaigns \u2014 previously focused on undermining pro-democracy voices in\u00a0Taiwan\u00a0and Hong Kong \u2014 to the wider world. As early as 2015, scholars from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies\u00a0predicted\u00a0that the People\u2019s Liberation Army would use Twitter to deliver propaganda to new audiences \u201cto influence the global conversation about China.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeijing has been playing this game for a long time in Taiwan and Hong Kong,\u201d said\u00a0Nadege Rolland, a senior fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research in Washington. \u201cIt has all the necessary architecture to deploy such tactics and has garnered a great deal of experience in previous disinformation campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n Wang, of Peking University, acknowledged that the Wolf Warrior style had sparked a debate within the party, although he declined to say whether such behavior would help China\u2019s image globally.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in a new context, new circumstances,\u201d he said. \u201cThe diplomats and government officials will learn from the process, from the reaction of others, what is the best way of communication.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the strategy was laid out in\u00a0a recent article\u00a0on a website run by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It proposed tactics that included: a 24-hour, rapid-response operation to quickly answer attacks; promoting Chinese social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat as alternatives to Twitter and Facebook; discussing China\u2019s shortcomings where they exist; and remaining \u201ccalm and objective\u201d while convincing people \u201cthrough reason.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, however, the pugnacious voices are resounding, threatening China\u2019s ties with other nations.<\/p>\n In Australia, which relies on China as a market for iron ore and other exports, and is a major destination for Chinese tourists and students, the prospect of an economic boycott by Beijing drew condemnations from across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was already dawning on many Australians that the strategic risk of overdependence on China was a problem that needed to be resolved,” said\u00a0Ashley Townshend, director of foreign policy at the United States Studies Center in Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pandemic and China\u2019s issuance of threats will quicken those calls for our own increased resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n But analysts say the menacing tone feeds patriotic sentiment in China, where the party is eager to limit the damage of an outbreak that has killed thousands and tipped the economy into decline for the first time in at least three decades.<\/p>\n Foreign criticism \u201cstrikes right at the heart of one of the myths that the party has been cultivating to bolster its legitimacy at home: that the [Chinese Communist Party] is efficient, competent and capable, and that it is the only one able to effectively lead the nation,\u201d Rolland said.<\/p>\n Shortly after Xi was named the party\u2019s general secretary in 2012 \u2014 on his way to becoming the country\u2019s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong \u2014 he reportedly\u00a0said in a speech\u00a0that one of the reasons the Communist Party collapsed in the Soviet Union was that \u201cnobody was man enough to stand up and resist.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think that Chinese diplomats are currently trying to show that they are man enough to stand up for the CCP,\u201d Rolland said.<\/p>\n Su reported from Bejing and Bengali from Singapore.<\/p>\n\n The newscast blares from a television set in a Beijing apartment, carrying through an open window and echoing across the compound. The refrain is the same every evening: praise for China\u2019s handling of the coronavirus, dire scenes from foreign hospitals and condemnations of the United States. The tone is often withering. Last week, U.S. Secretary …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[38],"tags":[4083],"yoast_head":"\n\r\n \t