A fortnight ago, the Chinese President led a study session for senior comrades that focused on how to create a more “loveable” image of China, which some speculated might signal a dialling down of Beijing’s abrasive diplomacy.
This week one of Xi’s most notorious Wolf Warriors, Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, clarified that he and his pugnacious diplomatic colleagues would keep swinging in defence of the motherland.
“We can’t still treat ourselves as a three-year-old when we have now grown into a 1.8m tall guy,” Lu told Guancha, a nationalistic Chinese government-aligned news website.
“(O) ur style has changed and you need to get used to our new style,” he said in a long interview.
Xi’s diplomats have made headlines for their aggressive attacks on the rising power’s critics – earning the Wolf Warrior nickname after a 2017 jingoistic action film that was the Chinese movie industry’s answer to Rambo.
Lu, 56, has been one of the most accomplished practitioners of what is officially called “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy”.
As Canada’s ambassador he accused his host country of “white supremacy” and stridently defended Beijing’s retaliatory detention of two Canadians after the Trudeau government arrested a senior Huawei executive.
Having impressed Beijing, he was promoted to be China’s senior diplomat in France, one of the most important posts in its diplomatic network.
Less than two years into the role, Lu is the most infamous diplomat in Paris.
He was summoned to the French foreign office last year after his embassy accused the Macron government of leaving its older citizens to die of Covid-19. He was summoned again in March for calling a French academic a “little thug” and “crazed hyena”.
Lu said that what he and his Chinese colleagues were doing was “merely justified defence” to protect China’s rights and interests.
“In the eyes of the Westerners, our diplomacy is on the offensive and aggressive, but the truth is, it is them who are on the offensive and aggressive,” he said.
Lu explained that China had shifted its focus from late leader Deng Xiaoping’s mantra of “hide your strength, bide your time” – tao guang yang hui – to a lesser known but more assertive line of “achieve something”.
“Comrade Deng Xiaoping talked about tao guang yang hui, but there is the latter half of the sentence – you suo zuo wei (achieve something),” he said.
“In this era, we put more emphasis on ‘achieve something’ because it is something we must do. The West has launched a public opinion war against us. How can we not fight back? China’s image would be tarnished as they desire if we do not strike back.”
Rather than toning down its Wolf Warrior-style, he said the approach needed to be complemented by similarly forceful Chinese academics and media.
Lu praised media including Guancha and the Global Times for helping China in the “battle of public opinion” over the past year.
He also singled out the 32-year-old “Wolf Warrior artist” Wuheqilin, who last year created an image of an Australian soldier murdering an Afghan child that went viral on the Chinese internet.
“His paintbrush is like a sharp knife, very powerful. We need such a person,” Lu said.
Public polling has shown a collapse of China’s image in the world as Lu and his colleagues have practised their abrasive craft.
The Pew Research Centre last October found unfavourable opinion about China at record levels in Australia, Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, the US, South Korea, Spain and Canada.
Lu dismissed that as the result of hostile media coverage made worse by Western envy of China’s superior handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The common people in the West have been brainwashed by the Western media for decades,” he said.
Citing Chairman Mao, the diplomat said it would take decades of struggle for China to win the “protracted battle”.
“I am afraid that the war of public opinion will accompany the entire process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
But, he added, the top priority for diplomacy in the Xi era was its domestic audience.
“We do not evaluate our work by how foreigners see us, but whether the people in our nation are happy with our work,” he said.
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One of Xi Jinping’s most ambitious diplomats has declared China’s Wolf Warrior diplomacy is “justified defence” against a West that needs “to get used to our new style”.