Peter Martin, "China's Wolf Warrior Diplomacy.” VIDEO event

This registration is for a VIDEO event via Zoom (in which participants can ask questions only via the chat function.) From 5:30-6 pm logon and social time, with presentation at 6 pm followed by question time and discussion. 

If you wish to enjoy social time in the Gold Room, and ask questions orally via the moderator, please register instead for the IN-PERSON event. 

Peter Martin, a defense policy and intelligence reporter for Bloomberg News, frequently writes stories about international events, especially US foreign policy with regard to China, Afghanistan and other hot spots. His Linked-In profile is here. His Twitter profile is here. 

He is the author of the book China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, (Oxford University Press, 2021) currently the No. 1 best seller in Asian History on Amazon. ISBN-13: 978-0197513705 | ISBN-10: 0197513700

https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Civilian-Army-Warrior-Diplomacy/dp/0197513700

The book argues that China's increasingly aggressive diplomats have not only failed to take advantage of the US diplomatic mistakes in "America First" policies, the Middle Eastern wars and in dropping out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Worse, even though the current generation speaks languages and is well educated in the West, they have antagonized other countries. 

The term Wolf Warrior has caught on as a foreign appellation of Chinese diplomats, derived from a popular film in which Chinese military forces act forcefully and heroically abroad, a sort of Chinese response to "Rambo" or more recently "Seal Team" type films. 

Martin read numerous memoirs of Chinese diplomats and interviewed many other foreign diplomats, finding that there are reasons for this counter-productive behavior. The Communist Party came to power with a reaction to the shameful weakness of imperial China, ruthlessly exploited by foreign empires in the nineteenth century. 

Zhou Enlai, who reconstructed the diplomatic corps from scratch in 1949, required diplomats to act in pairs, checking each other for party loyalty and reporting all interactions to their superiors. His first generation were neither linguists nor well educated, but at least were actively loyal to the communist party and Maoism.

From about 1995-2005, Chinese policy became more engaged through trade, and diplomats both capable and more forthcoming to international diplomats. Under Xi Jinping, who consolidated power and is now effectively president for life, strident "China First" rhetoric is popular domestically -- but counter-productive with potential international partners.

Whereas the US State Department has been weakened in recent decades both in resources and in authority, the Chinese MOFA (which in Mandarin lends itself to puns with "Magic") has grown in resources and stature with the Chinese government. Even talented diplomats (now often western educated, and multi-lingual) are unable to speak diplomatically, let alone bend to compromise with foreigners, but must toe the party line, and in public, vigorously insulting foreigners.