Meet China’s Wolf Warriors: Brash, thin-skinned and targeting Australia

Aggressive, blustering, and given to the occasional tantrum, “wolf warrior” diplomats are the front-line soldiers in China’s ever-­louder propaganda war.

• China bans our barley? Let's ban its solar panels.
• China isn't picking on Australia. It's bullying the world

Meet the Wolf Warriors: Aggressive, blustering, and given to the occasional tantrum, they are the front-line soldiers in China’s ever-­louder propaganda war.

These are the diplomats, spokesmen and advocates tasked by Beijing with shifting blame for the regime’s failure to stop COVID-19 from escaping into the world — and at the same time ­convincing us, against mounting evidence to the contrary, that the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions are peaceful.

China has imposed an 80 per cent tariff on barley imports from Australia. Picture: Richard Wainwright/AAP Image

Taking their name from a popular nationalist Chinese film franchise about a Rambo-like security contractor who takes on American mercenaries, the Wolf Warriors compete to outdo one ­another with aggressive, bullying rhetoric — as well as a thin-skinned hypersensitivity that makes them the ultimate cry-bullies.

In other words, when it comes to the subtle art of using words to win friends and influence people, these “diplomats” are more ­Eric Cartman than Henry ­Kissinger.

But now with trade tensions at an all time high over demands for a coronavirus ­inquiry, Beijing’s wolf warriors in Australia are at the forefront of the communist regime’s crumbling attempts to use “soft diplomacy” to convince the world that its ­intentions are peaceful — even as their actions become ever more threatening.

And they’ve been firing up for some time, with diplomats even turning into Twitter trolls — ironic given that the social media platform is banned in China.

Take the case of Zhao ­Lijian, who started out as a minor diplomat and won a coveted spot as spokesman for Beijing’s foreign ministry.

Zhao first came to prominence in the United States last year when he responded on the mass internment and worse of China’s Muslim Uig­hur population with a series of snarky tweets about racial discrimination in the US.

The Australian wine trade into China is also under threat.

With coronavirus raging, Zhao made headlines again for pushing a conspiracy ­theory that COVID-19 came from the US and was spread by American soldiers in Wuhan for an athletics competition last year, tweeting: “When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be ­transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an ­explanation!”

Needless to say, there’s ­little chance that Zhao was pressing that theory without approval from on high, suggesting that for China’s foreign service the competition is on to see who can be the most outrageous and offensive in defence of the homeland.

And when it comes to consistency, never mind that Zhao’s call suggests China is happy with anybody being ­investigated over the coronavirus … except China.

Foreign students, including many Chinese, who study at Australian universities, including the University of Sydney, create another lucrative business for Australia. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Nor is it just big targets like the US who are the subject of the wolf pack’s ire.

China’s embassy in Sri Lanka was reportedly so bothered by a tweet by a local with just 30 followers calling the Chinese government “low class” that it fired back “Total death in #China #pandemic is 3344 till today, much ­smaller than your western ‘high class’ governments”.

In Australia, the bickering has consequences, with our exports of barley, beef, wine and other products being held up by China’s war of words.

The big problem for Beijing now is that having annoyed so many other nations with their behaviour, they may soon find themselves on the end of boycotts of their own.

Originally published as Meet China’s Wolf Warriors: Brash, thin-skinned and targeting Australia