The Chinese diplomacy

Zhao Lijian, the increasingly controversial spokesman of China's Foreign Ministry, this week posted a graphic (and fake) image that purported to show an Australian soldier slitting a child's throat.

"Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians and prisoners by Australian soldiers," he tweeted in a message (subsequently removed by Twitter) accompanied by the false photo, highlighting alleged human-rights violations committed by Australian troops during the war in Afghanistan, claims that have been and continue to be investigated by Canberra.

Zhao has a certain form. Earlier this year, he began posting allegations on social media that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was intentionally spread by the United States as a biological weapon against China. When that narrative failed, he contended that the virus emerged in Italy.

Zhao has become the public face of the "Wolf Warrior" breed of Chinese diplomats who have consistently and seemingly pointlessly antagonized the West, yielding a collapse in the perception of China and its role in the world within the

United States, Canada, Australia and Germany, among others.

Zhao's post came just days after Beijing slapped a tariff of up to 200% on Australian wine imports. Some international media parroted Beijing's line by framing this decision as the outcome of an ongoing "trade dispute," when in fact it was a unilateral action by Beijing due to Canberra's support for international investigations into China's mass human-rights violations against the Uighurs in Xinjiang and into China's responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic.

As Foreign Ministry spokesman, there can be no doubt that Zhao's actions are sanctioned by his superiors; independent actors are non-existent in Chinese diplomacy. In light of Beijing's increasingly outrageous public statements and actions, it is necessary to ask: What is Beijing attempting to achieve here?

China spent decades framing itself as a "responsible power," assiduously cultivating the image of a benign power that sought a "harmonious world." For two decades, myriad scholars and analysts asserted that China would gradually be assimilated into existing global norms and systems and would be an essential and reliable partner on issues ranging from climate change to poverty alleviation.

The "Australian incident" appears to be yet another example of Beijing's inability under its current leadership to climb the learning curve of international diplomacy. For all the billions of dollars it pumps around the world, for all the trade opportunities it offers developing and developed countries, for all the political shielding it can offer authoritarian states, it has won few influential friends and quickly lost a good number of pivotal allies.

In Asia, its closest allies are two of the continent's smallest states: Cambodia and Laos. In Europe: Hungary and Serbia. In Latin America: perhaps Venezuela. A much longer list is needed for the friends and "engagers" it has lost, even just over the past 12 months.

Foremost is the United States, where the only bipartisan issue now is an anti-China foreign policy. Also on this list are the United Kingdom, Australia, and potentially Germany and Singapore. Even Sri Lanka now wavers over its loyalties to Beijing, while the leaders of Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand have had to backtrack their opening to China.

Chinese foreign policy has a number of surpluses. It has a financial surplus, thanks to decades of economic growth and Xi Jinping's signature Belt and Road Initiative, spending and lending hundreds of billions of dollars on investment projects globally as part of the BRI. It has an attention surplus, in that the Communist Party of China doesn't suffer from the periodical power shifts of democratic states and has historically been seen as having a distinct advantage in light of its long term time horizons.

And it has a growing military surplus, in that neighboring states are increasingly concerned about their own security, such as Vietnam (although US military support has eased its nerves).

However, all of these are being wasted because of its three main deficits. An empathy deficit, in that Beijing is unable (or unwilling) to understand that other countries do politics differently. As Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated when responding to recent Chinese criticism, Beijing's problem appears to be that "Australia is being Australia." A history deficit, in that Beijing's actions are carried out via its own understanding of history - and the CPC's utilization thereof to derive domestic legitimacy via its "more nationalist than thou" approach in the context of slowing economic growth.