Chinese eye-poking threat falls short of full ‘wolf warrior’
A threat to poke and blind a trading partner doesn’t sound like a sign of a ‘‘mature relationship’’ between China and New Zealand, but the recent rise in diplomatic temperature isn’t yet a sign of deterioration, foreign policy experts say.
The latest warning shots fired from Beijing to Wellington over a Five Eyes statement about Hong Kong has come in two volleys. First, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that Five Eyes nations, which include New Zealand, need to ‘‘beware of their eyes being poked and blinded’’.
The Chinese Embassy in Wellington on Monday issued a statement saying the
Five Eyes countries need to ‘‘refrain from going further down the wrong path, and collude with each other in wrong-doings’’.
Associate Professor Jason Young, the director of the Contemporary China Research Centre at Victoria University, said the past few years have shown such issues will pop up periodically in the New Zealand-China relationship.
‘‘There’s a pattern with some diplomats in foreign affairs in China, they call it this whole idea of ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’. Some Chinese diplomats, and also the foreign affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian, have very colourful and quite jarring ways of talking about differences.
‘‘It’s very rarely been directed towards New Zealand, so when we’re part of that group of five countries and it’s directed to us, it’s quite jarring.’’
Young said that while the statements were newsworthy, the economic relationship between the two countries was ‘‘thickening’’, helping to stabilise diplomatic relations.
‘‘Depending on the severity of these issues, and how they’re handled, there is potential for fallout in the relationship . . . The severity of it will depend on whether or not it will have an impact on the broader relationship, which at the moment it still seems to be quite limited.’’
Young said the Government routinely described its relationship with China as ‘‘mature’’. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday said Zhao’s statement was proof of a ‘‘mature relationship’’. Young agreed: ‘‘My own view is that, I think, we should avoid jumping at shadows ... I don’t actually think it’s very useful to always be, sort of, panicking or saying, ‘This will have a negative impact on the relationship’.
‘‘Instead we need to be a bit more mature about it in the idea that, of course we disagree, and that we hope we can disagree in a way that doesn’t have a broader impact on what we see as a broader relationship.’’
Catherine Churchman, a Victoria University lecturer in Asian Studies, said New Zealand had not yet been on the receiving end of ‘‘wolf warrior’’ diplomacy, and why it hadn’t been was an important question.
‘‘That talk about poking people’s eyes blind and so on, that’s just what they have to do as an official reply to things.’’
In Australia, by comparison, a Chinese government official last week handed reporters a document detailing ‘‘14 grievances’’ that Beijing had with the government there.
‘‘I can’t read their minds, but it seems to be quite significant, if you run through that list and look at what they’ve done that we haven’t done,’’ Churchman said.