Review | ‘Wolf warrior’ diplomacy’s long pedigree in China, and the man who gave birth to it: Zhou Enlai

There is nothing new about Chinese diplomats’ theatrical anger and insistence the onus for progress rests with the other side, Bloomberg’s Peter Martin writes

The same can be said of the flattery with which China beguiled US journalist Edgar Snow, Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump, he explains in a new book

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Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, Richard Nixon and Shanghai Communist Party leader Chang Chun-chiao attend a farewell banquet for the US president at the end of his 1972 visit to China. Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Peter Neville-Hadley

Published: 9:15am, 5 Jun 2021Updated: 9:16am, 5 Jun 2021

China’s Civilian Army by Peter Martin, Oxford University Press

Much has been written recently of a new tone of aggression in Chinese diplomacy, which has earned the country’s diplomats the title of “wolf warriors”, after the 2017 Chinese Rambo-like blockbuster film Wolf Warrior 2.

“Even though a thousand miles away, anyone who affronts China will pay,” read the tagline on the film’s advertising.

To write China’s Civilian Army, Bloomberg’s Peter Martin interviewed dozens of diplomats, and trawled though more than 100 volumes of memoirs by major and minor figures alike.

Zhou Enlai meets Henry Kissinger in Beijing in 1971. The Chinese premier formed the diplomatic corps of the People’s Republic along pseudo-military lines, a legacy that lives on. Photo: AFP/Consolidated News Pictures

He finds no shocking revelations; even when written under pseudonyms and published during periods of relative political openness, these books were still censored.