The Return of Wolf Warriors in Mediator Clothing
China is all for territorial integrity — whenever it suits Beijing, that is. Its potential fans in the Global South should take note.
Minister Li in Moscow: Thank you for promoting world peace, Mr. Putin.
Photographer: Pavel Bednyakov/AFP via Getty Images
So much for China’s claims to be a global peace broker, or even just a responsible major power that might one day substitute a Pax Sinica for the waning Pax Americana. Recent howlers by the Middle Kingdom’s diplomats should remind everyone that a world in which the autocrats of Zhongnanhai enforce international order will be dystopian. That message is especially worth hearing by those leaders in the “Global South” still tempted to triangulate between Washington, Beijing and Moscow.
Just last week, China’s ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, was giving a lengthy TV interview in impressive French, when he began indulging in creative reinterpretations of the status of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in 2014. “It depends how you perceive the problem,” Lu suggested. Oh, it does, does it?