Following the revelation that Australian Prime Minister Morrison agreed that China’s sanctions were a lion dance, the European Parliament voted last night to freeze deliberations and discussions on the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CEI), countering China’s sanctions against EU entities and members of the European Parliament. Whether China is a sleeping or waking lion from a century ago, a “paper dragon” as the U.S. media calls it, or a self-confessed “war wolf,” the shelving of the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement shows that no matter what image China tries to use, no matter what means of inducement and deterrence, it cannot The shelving of the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CIA) shows that no matter what image China tries to use, no matter what means of inducement and deterrence, it will not be able to run amok in the world.
The “waking lion” used to be a nationalist symbol
The most common phrase used by Chinese officials in recent years to counter criticism from the U.S. and Europe is that China is no longer the China of a century ago, in a gesture of cleansing itself of a century of shame, especially in the 16-minute belly-bursting speech by Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi during the “2+2” talks with Blinken and Sullivan in Alaska in March this year. The golden phrase “the Chinese don’t eat this” has become fodder for numerous secondary creations. According to the Washington Post, this was the first time the Biden administration had learned China’s “wolf diplomacy” style.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, in response to German media’s accusation of China’s war-wolf diplomacy last December, said boldly that in order to safeguard the dignity of the country’s interests, China would “do what’s wrong with being a war wolf”. Although she cited the Disney animation “The Lion King” as an example, saying that Simba grew up and matured in the midst of various doubts, reproaches and blows, she ultimately did not use the Lion King to describe China, but agreed with the saying of war wolf diplomacy.
Although China is said to be the home of the dragon, at the beginning of the 20th century, the nationalists of the late Qing Dynasty preferred to choose the sleeping lion as the symbol of China rather than the dragon, which had become the symbol of the decadent court, and even said under the guise of Napoleon: “China is a sleeping lion, once it wakes up, it will surely shake the world!” After the rise of China in the 1990s, the “awakening lion” once became a nationalist symbol to wash away the shame of a century of diplomacy, until the movie “War Wolf”, which swept the Chinese box office in 2015, came out, and the “war wolf” began to replace the dragon and lion as China’s totem. Diplomacy has become the main theme of Xi Jinping’s diplomacy in the new era.
When Western countries pay attention to China’s war wolf diplomacy, they actually do not forget China’s image of dragon or lion. The Chinese Communist Party has been calling the U.S. empire a “paper tiger,” and the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly published an article on “China is a Paper Dragon,” saying that the claim that China is about to surpass the U.S. economically, militarily and technologically is grossly exaggerated. A commentary in the Global Times, the official media of the Communist Party of China, called Australia a “paper cat”, while the Australian media recently reported that Australian Prime Minister Morrison believes that China’s trade sanctions against Australia are a traditional lion dance that only performs but does not bite.
The “war wolf” kills 800 enemies and loses a thousand
However, the lion dance does not bite, but the war wolf does. China-Australia relations have continued to be strained since last year, with China’s list of banned imports of Australian goods growing longer and longer, and on the 6th of this month China even announced an indefinite halt to all activities under the Strategic Economic Dialogue mechanism with Australia. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the Australian side cannot expect to renege and sabotage cooperation while pretending to be innocent and shrugging off blame.
The waking lion and war wolf that will bite is not only fighting a trade war with Australia and the United States, but also imposing sanctions on entities and personnel of the United States and the European Union. However, there is no shortage of examples of war wolf diplomacy that kills 800 enemies and damages a thousand. This was the case with the overturning of the preliminary agreement on trade talks between the U.S. and China in May of the previous year, the hard selling of the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law last year, and the sanctions against MEPs this time.
At the end of last year, China and China concluded more than seven years of negotiations to reach the China-EU Comprehensive Investment Agreement, which was supposed to be the result of significant concessions made by the Chinese side to unite Europe against the United States, and only awaits ratification by the European Parliament and member states. As a result, the EU, which has already bitten the bait, may have to choose to disassociate itself from the agreement and follow the same pace as Australia and Japan in its policy toward China, under pressure from its members. The Chinese Communist Party has won face but lost strategy to meet the centenary of its founding.
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