Ambition Realized

Within hours of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, China’s diplomats moved to improve ties with the United States. Spotting an opportunity to improve their country’s international image and influence as the United States became distracted by the Middle East, Beijing established important bilateral dialogues with countries around the world and invested in its soft power. China’s previous efforts to woo its neighbors after Tiananmen and especially after the 1996 Taiwan Straits also paid off. The period culminated with China hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics—the most significant moment of international validation for the regime since its founding. Beijing’s improved reputation was damaged, however, when it began to act assertively in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis.

Rethinking Capitalism

Deng Xiaoping’s domestic economic reforms and his outreach to the West marked the start of an extraordinary period of learning and experimentation in China. Diplomats were at the vanguard of this process. Far more exposed than even the most powerful Beijing officials to just how far China had fallen behind, they found themselves confronted with unsettling truths: the capitalist model they had long reviled had delivered greater prosperity and higher living standards than communism. Some even began to question the Party’s monopoly on power. As China pursued economic reforms at home, the country’s diplomatic corps also underwent a makeover: China professionalized its diplomats, ditched Mao suits for Western attire, retired many of the 1950s old guard, and expanded its diplomatic network.

Shadow Diplomacy

Zhou Enlai recruited Communist Party cadres to conduct foreign affairs work even before the PRC was founded. Knowing that it needed international legitimacy to survive, the Party put together a small coterie of foreign affairs specialists in its post–Long March revolutionary base of Yan’an. Many of the practices and cultures laid down by this group continue to shape Chinese foreign policy today—including hospitality techniques designed to win over foreign visitors. This chapter tells the story of the group, with a focus on a recruit named Huang Hua, who would later go on to become foreign minister.

The Fightback

This chapter tells the story of the events of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre inside the foreign ministry and follows the painstaking efforts of Chinese diplomats to salvage China’s reputation. In the aftermath of the massacre, the country’s diplomats made painstaking efforts to salvage China’s international reputation. Channeling the same impulses they’d used to woo the world in the 1950s, the country launched a new charm offensive with its neighbors, embracing tools from economic diplomacy to sports diplomacy, media management, and arms control to try to win friends. At the same time, China’s diplomats were branded traitors by nationalists who saw engagement with the United States as a throwback to China’s humiliating past after the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Diplomacy in Retreat

The Cultural Revolution was the most destructive period in the diplomatic history of the People’s Republic. It would bring down much of what had so far been achieved and leave indelible scars on multiple generations of diplomats—just as it left scars across the country. China’s progress in establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world ground to a complete halt from the middle of 1966 until the end of 1969. As factional violence exploded across the country, China harassed foreign diplomats at home and used its embassies to promote revolution abroad. Most of its diplomats were brought back to Beijing and pitched against each other in scarring political battles, public “self-criticisms,” and brutal outbreaks of violence. Many were later sent to labor camps in the countryside.

Chasing Respectability

After the end of the Korean War, China sent its diplomats out on a charm offensive to win over global opinion, including sending delegations to the Geneva and Bandung Conferences, where its performance won plaudits in the West and across the developing world. During this period, China also deployed distinctively communist techniques in its diplomacy, including the use of “united front” tactics to charm influential social groups in countries where China didn’t yet have formal diplomatic ties. Many of the tools Chinese diplomats practiced during the 1950s are taking on renewed prominence in its foreign policy today as China seeks to increase its influence around the world.

Introduction

Chinese diplomats play a crucial role as the face of the world’s second largest economy. They have become more assertive and even aggressive in recent years, leading some to dub them “wolf warriors.” This chapter explains how their recent behavior has deep roots in China’s political system, especially the desire of the PRC’s founding leaders to model the country’s diplomatic corps on the People’s Liberation Army. “Wolf warrior” behavior represents a recurring response to political tensions at home, which has manifested itself again and again during the history of the PRC. The chapter also introduces the book’s source base of the memoirs of more than a hundred retired diplomats and dozens of interviews.

The Founder

Just as J. Edgar Hoover molded the modern FBI, Zhou Enlai’s personality and policy choices continue to shape how China’s foreign ministry interacts with the outside world today. This chapter tells the story of how the PRC’s first foreign minister and premier became a revolutionary and shows how his life experiences and beliefs continue to shape Chinese diplomacy. It also explores how the behavior of today’s Chinese diplomats is shaped by memories of “national humiliation” in the decades before the PRC’s founding. For Zhou and many of his contemporaries, communist revolution appeared to offer a way to save their country as well as to remake its society.

Selective Integration

After Henry Kissinger’s secret visit in 1971, China claimed its seat at the United Nations and set about learning how to deal with global institutions. The country’s entrance into the organization was eye-opening for Chinese diplomats and also began a process of international integration that would see Beijing establish ties with virtually every other country in the world. Still, China’s international integration was slowed by continuing political uncertainty at home, which was settled only after the death of Mao, the fall of the Gang of Four, and the eventual ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping.

Conclusion

Chinese envoys today are in some ways unrecognizable from those who started out as the country’s first diplomats in 1949. They are more professional, more cosmopolitan, and more expert than any previous generation, studying for advanced degrees at top global universities, mastering obscure languages, and developing specialist expertise on topics from global finance to nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, China’s political system sets real limits on the ability of its diplomats to be persuasive. It’s also a system that leaves its practitioners with little space to improvise and show flexibility, little room to take the initiative, and therefore not much chance of changing the viewpoints of people they interface with. It leaves them effective at garnering influence through inducements or threats but poorly equipped to make real friends.