May, 17 2020
Today we’re going to talk about Diplomacy. And just so you know this article has been edited for length and if very worth reading in its entirety. From the BBC today’s article is entitled:
China’s new army of tough-talking diplomats: By James Landale
Once upon a time Chinese statecraft was discreet and enigmatic.
Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, wrote in his seminal study Diplomacy that "Beijing's diplomacy was so subtle and indirect that it largely went over our heads in Washington".
Governments in the West employed sinologists to interpret the opaque signals emanating from China's politburo.
Under its former leader, Deng Xiaoping, the country's declared strategy was to "hide its ability and bide its time". Well, not any more.
China has dispatched an increasingly vocal cadre of diplomats out into the world of social media to take on all comers with, at times, an eye-blinking frankness. Their aim is to defend China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and challenge those who question Beijing's version of events.
So they launch salvos of persistent tweets and posts from their embassies around the world. And they hold little back, deploying sarcasm and aggression in equal measure.
Such is the novelty of their techniques that they have been dubbed "wolf warrior" diplomats after the eponymous action films.
Wolf Warrior and Wolf Warrior 2 are hugely popular movies in which elite Chinese special forces take on American-led mercenaries and other ne'er-do-wells. They are violent and extremely nationalistic in tone.
One critic dubbed them "Rambo with Chinese characteristics". A promotional poster showed a picture of the central character raising his middle finger with the slogan: "Anyone who offends China, no matter how remote, must be exterminated."
In a recent editorial, the Chinese Communist Party newspaper, Global Times, declared the people were "no longer satisfied with a flaccid diplomatic tone" and said the West feels challenged by China's new "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy.
Perhaps the quintessential "wolf warrior" is Lijian Zhao, China's young foreign affairs spokesman. He is the official who made the unsubstantiated suggestion that the United States might have brought coronavirus to Wuhan.
He has more than 600,000 followers on Twitter and he exploits that audience almost by the hour, relentlessly tweeting, retweeting and liking anything that promotes and defends China.
This is of course what diplomats anywhere in the world must do: it is their job to promote their country's national interest. But few diplomats use language that is, well, so undiplomatic.
Take the Chinese embassy in India which described calls for China to pay compensation for spreading the virus as "ridiculous and eyeball-catching nonsense".
In response to Mr Trump's much mocked speculation about the best ways of tackling the virus, the chief spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing tweeted: "Mr President is right. Some people do need to be injected with #disinfectant, or at least gargle with it. That way they won't spread the virus, lies and hatred when talking."
In London, China's "wolf warrior" is Ma Hui, number 3 at the embassy. His Twitter username includes the words "warhors" and he is as prolific as he is robust.
He tweeted: "Some US leaders have stooped so low to lie, misinform, blame, stigmatise. That is very despicable, but we should not lower our standard, race to the bottom. They don't care a lot about morality, integrity but we do. We can also fight back [against] their stupidity."
Now much of this may look like the familiar knockabout you get on social media. But for China, it is a huge departure. Research by the German Marshall Fund think-tank suggests there has been a 300% increase in official Chinese state Twitter accounts over the last year, with a fourfold increase in posts.
Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the GMF, said: "This is very unusual from what we have come to expect from China.
"In the past, China's public face has been to show a positive image of the country. There has been an encouragement of friendship. Cute panda videos would be much more common than harsh take-downs of various government policies. So this is a really big departure."
Some strategists argue that while the West will have to increase its strategic independence from China after the pandemic, it will also have to find a new framework for co-operation.
China's "wolf warrior" diplomacy may not be making that any easier.
So, like I said, that article was significantly longer before I edited it, and most of the added length is material describing just how obnoxious and aggressive Chinese diplomats are becoming. The just put trade bans on Australia, have made accusations against Indian politicians of racism, they have said that people demanding financial compensation for China’s responsibility in the virus are being insulted and derided and told that they’re trying to shift the blame!
China is facing major backlash in Africa – which China is hoping to exploit and is investing in heavily – for the overtly racist treatment of black Africans in China. And I’m not talking about racism in the sense that hyper-sensitive social justice warriors mean racism; I mean overt racism.
China and her diplomats are playing the classical game of the bully – they accuse others of what they themselves are doing and hope that by being loud enough and threatening enough people will simply give in to their demands.
And the fact is, that people might.
But the Chinese government is in a pickle. They want to stay in power and that’s all they want according to Princeton professor Steven Kotkin. China is no longer working for worldwide communist revolution, but the politburo is only interested in staying in power, so they’re changing the narrative from destroying capitalism to Chinese nationalism.
But there’s the rub. If they push for Chinese nationalism, then they have to quit the careful, subtle, deep-thinking, long-strategy game that China has always played. Now they have to be brash and brusque and burly bullies. They have to throw their weight around.
And the question is: is this China acting strong because she is strong or overcompensating for her weakness and vulnerability on the world stage? Because China IS vulnerable. Economically and geopolitically, China is facing a lot of potential disasters and it’s brutality and its willingness to infringe on copyrights and its currency manipulation, as well as its openly aggressive tone have caused people to rethink how closely ties they want to be to China and how dependent they wish their economies to be on a totalitarian state with a potentially disastrous debt crisis looming.
Only time will tell if China is just the dragon awaking from slumber or the overcompensating bully – or whether it’s a little bit of both. But if the world’s reaction to Putin’s Russia is any indicator, being a bully may be the perfect way to get exactly what China wants. Or at least to get part of what it wants. And the Bible actually has a lot to say about this issue.
But there’s another issue that’s worth talking about that I want to focus on today, and that is China’s insistence that it bears no responsibility for what happened with the Coronavirus. In fact, one of these wolf warrior ambassadors from China was quoted as saying this: “So-called complaint by certain Indian organizations to UNHRC asking China compensate for losses caused by #COVID19 is ridiculous & eyeball-catching nonsense. As this difficult time, we need to work together instead of stigmatizing others & shifting blame.”
Well, is it? I mean, I’m not sure how something can be a so-called complaint, but I’m no lawyer. But Indians apparently are appealing to the Un Human Rights Council to demand that China be held accountable for knowingly letting Coronavirus spread – which is bad enough. But if it’s true that this started in a Chinese virology lab, then China cannot evade moral or financial responsibility.
But instead what is the Chinese ambassador’s response? He dismisses complaints calling them nonsense and THEN accuses the Indians of shifting blame. How? How are the Indians shifting blame? If the complaint is that China is legally responsible for damages caused by Coronavirus because they knowingly let it spread around the world then India isn’t shifting blame, it’s putting blame squarely where it belongs!
Because the fact is that people are responsible for their actions whether the consequences are intended or unintended.
Recently I spoke on this issue in a church Bible Study which you can find at our church website bryanfbc.org and if you find the Bible Study from April 22, entitled what we owe eachother, in our Through The Bible sermon series. And the fact is that whether you intend to do hard or not is not the issue. If you fail to take appropriate precautions, you are responsible for someone else’s injury – whether you meant to harm them or not. The Bible is clear about this. The Bible is clear – read Exodus chapters 21-3. You will see that the Bible is extremely clear and explicit that reckless behavior is morally and legally culpable behavior. And I doubt there are too many people who would deny that China behaved recklessly – letting 5 million people leave Wuhan before locking it down. BTW, that’s nearly half the population!
China claims it’s not responsible, but that certainly isn’t how the government is behaving. It has censored and deleted countless journalistic articles and pictures and online accounts for people who have the temerity to question the Central Committee’s handling of events, in fact WIRED magazine online has a very good article about Chinese censorship. I doubt China will ever own up to its actual fault in the outbreak nor be willing to admit that it hasn’t been lying and covering up and unpersoning critics and dissidents.
Then again, that’s been China’s modus operandi since at least Chairman Mao and I’m guessing before him!
The whole point is that China, particularly the Chinese politburo cannot afford to admit that it has failed or made a mistake! How can it justify its total power, its wealth, its status as being above the law? How can Xi Jinping justify his position as dictator for life if they can’t even deal with these problems? Just like all dictators, the answer is never to admit fault and take responsibility and to seek to improve and be more accountable and work harder! No. The answer is to blame limiters and wreckers and other scapegoats – to blame America or the West or Capitalism or whatever needs to be blamed to keep from taking responsibility!
Bad leaders never want to take responsibility. Tyrants always blame others – godly leaders own their faults and repent of them and strive to making things whole and making things right!
In Luke 10 we find a passage that most people probably don’t think of as being about responsibility… but it certainly is.
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (NIV11)
You see, friends the whole parable of the good Samaritan is about what we owe to one another. People often look at it as a passage about love about Jew Gentile relationships about Jewish expectations – and it is all of those things! Parables can have many subtexts and many important insights. But as much as anything this who parable is about responsibility.
Remember how this parable begins!
The young man wants to know what he has to do to inherit eternal life and Jesus tells him to obey the laws he mentioned and the man would live. –But the man’s spirit is testifying to him that he really doesn’t possess eternal life and his conscience is getting at him and in his own mind he wonders about assurance of salvation! He’s become a spiritual neurotic – and friends – works-based salvation WILL make you a neurotic – or a psychotic. And do you know what the difference is? The psychotic believes there’s a murderer hiding under his bed. The neurotic knows there’s no murder but he worries about it. So, this young neurotic legalist says what do I still lack and Jesus says, you need to love your neighbor. And of course, the young man wants to limit his responsibility to something he can actually achieve – which is smart to make your responsibility as small as possible if you’re gonna earn your salvation. But Jesus says that you’re responsible to everyone. The question is not WHO is my neighbor but WHAT is my neighbor. Jesus says that a neighbor is a human being with a need you can fulfill! And if there’s somebody in your life who has needs you can fulfill, that person is your neighbor and you owe that person a debt of love. We owe eachother the kind of love that Jesus gave to us. And that’s a debt so big that none of us can carry it! Only the indwelling Holy Spirit can carry a burden so heavy. The very impossibility of our responsibility to others is the very thing that makes anything less a paltry, self-indulgent bit of hypocritical, pharisaic, piousity. Really bearing each other’s burdens is so costly that only Christ can bear the burden.
As Christians we need to repent of our self-indulgence and pray that Christ, through the Holy Spirit would help us be neighbors to those in need.
I hope and pray we will; and I hope you’ll join us again next week for another exciting episode of Truth in Journalism.