After the Chinese Communist Party announced last week that it would indefinitely suspend all activities under the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with Australia, Chinese Internet users cheered that it was time to catch Australia as a target to poke its fingers in the air and deter its opponents, in order to break the siege of China by the Five Eyes Alliance or the Group of Seven. The blind poke diplomacy is an upgraded version of the war wolf diplomacy, more ferocious and more street fighting, which also makes some netizens nostalgic for the late Premier Zhou Enlai’s criticism that “the Chinese people are not to be messed with”, creating a sense that the Chinese are unreasonable.
Promoting Australia’s softness to stimulate patriotic sentiment
China-Australia relations are at a low point in the 50 years since diplomatic relations were established in 1972. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using pro-communist newspapers and networks outside of China to attack Australia as a pawn of the United States in its return to the Asia-Pacific region and its suppression of China, and is responsible for the deterioration of China-Australia relations. The new online article “Australia softens within 24 hours, how powerful is China’s hand? The article, “Australia softens within 24 hours, how powerful is China’s hand”, has been circulating on official websites and social media.
The online article called “soft” is one of the ways for the Chinese Communist Party to publicize its diplomatic achievements in recent years, such as “Finally soft, Britain’s attitude toward China makes a 180-degree turn”, “Canada softens to China on its own initiative, annoying the country it can’t afford”, “Sweden softens, cancels Huawei ban”, “Japan softens, foreign minister personally clarifies misunderstanding to China”, etc. The reports and comments are mixed with truth and fiction, but they are enjoyable to listen to and help stimulate the public’s patriotic sentiment.
But there is no doubt about whether Australia has softened. For one thing, the last economic and strategic dialogue between China and Australia was in 2017, that is, it has been interrupted for four years, and in recent years China and Australia trade war, spy war, media war constantly, but see fist to fist, do not see Australia submit to softness. Second, the Chinese official media reported that the Australian dollar plummeted in response, but the Australian dollar only had a brief decline against the U.S. dollar on the 6th, and recently hit a two-month high. Third, the call to boycott Australian iron ore has resurfaced, but China will import 730 million tons of iron ore from Australia in 2020, accounting for 70 percent of total imports, so the so-called boycott is simply a paper exercise.
The real concern is whether the Chinese Communist Party is using Australia as a target to poke blind and break its fingers when dealing with the siege of the Five Eyes Alliance and the Group of Seven (G7). There is a secular Chinese saying that when fighting in a group in the street, you should catch one and beat him to death until he is powerless to fight back, which effectively weakens the opponent’s power and deters his peers. The escalation of war wolf diplomacy to poking blind and breaking fingers diplomacy is based on this tactic of street gangsters fighting in a group, and is also the first public statement by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
Crude Diplomatic Discourse and Fantasy of Surpassing the West
On November 19 last year, the Five Eyes Coalition issued a statement saying that China’s DQ of the four pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong violated Hong Kong’s commitment to a high degree of autonomy and freedom of expression, to which Zhao Lijian responded, “Be careful of being blinded” if you dare to harm China’s sovereignty and security, regardless of whether you have five or ten eyes. This is the name of the diplomacy, which has been used by some media and netizens. In March this year, when Chinese official media incited netizens to boycott international fashion and sportswear brands, they focused on H&M, but left Nike and Adidas alone.
The poking blind diplomacy has led to criticism that the CCP worships violent revolutions and is a sign of the CCP’s crass diplomatic discourse. Some netizens turned to retired Chinese diplomat Liu Yibin’s memoir “Zhou Enlai’s Fine”, published in 2015, to euphemistically admonish. The author drafted a protest note to Indonesia, using the phrase “the Chinese people are not to be messed with”, but Zhou Enlai changed it to “the Chinese people are not to be bullied”. The author recalls that “‘not to be bullied’ was typical of the language of the rebellion at that time, appearing strong, relatively relieved and painful, but giving a sense of toughness, pretension and even brutality, which was indeed inappropriate to use in the government’s foreign documents.” Zhou Enlai later revisited the matter, emphasizing not to use such words as “not to be messed with” and “not to give the impression that the Chinese are unreasonable.
As time has changed, Zhou Enlai’s reasonable diplomacy and Deng Xiaoping’s bushwhacking diplomacy have become historical documents, and Xi Jinping has publicly stated that the Chinese people “cannot be messed with” and “if they are messed with, it is not a good idea”. The development of war wolf diplomacy into blind poking diplomacy is a strategy corresponding to this idea, but can it make Australia soft, can it deter the Five Eyes Alliance and the G7, and can it once again surpass 300 years of Western international relations theory? Is it a Chinese dream, or a Chinese fantasy?
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