Talk:Wolf warrior diplomacy

cthombor (talk) 06:33, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Content dispute

@PailSimon: next time open a talk page discussion rather than WP:edit warring. What specifically do you see that isn't backed up by what we have in the body? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:43, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Whitewash

This page has clearly been sanitized by wolf warrior Wikipedians. It's not a good look guys from the CCP. Yellowmellow45 (talk) 09:49, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Dispute over artwork

@The Little Platoon: I'm not sure if it's Wikipedia policy to refer to an apparent consensus regarding a different article as a justification for a revert on this one, but anyhow for other editors, please see the discussion on Zhao Lijian for the dispute over the phrase "digitally manipulated" vs "artwork" and similar alternatives. Acalycine (talk) 05:25, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not revolve around precedent, nor is uniformity between articles stipulated by policy. I think the consensus here so far has been in favour of artistic image. the citations use the language "fake image" and "purports to show". since we already have it written later saying that an artist made the image I think keeping it as Artistic is the best choice. it also illustrates its not an actual depiction of the event nor does it invent some manipulation that is not evident from the current citations. Thehighwayman5 (talk) 08:23, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

You don't appear to have edited a diverse range of articles here at Wikipedia @Thehighwayman5: so let's start on a respectful tone. To achieve a consensus for a change we would need more than just your lone voice. The place where this seems to be discussed is here so I invite you to bring your reliable sources and your most persuasive arguments there.The Little Platoon (talk) 11:50, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Zhao Lijian/Australia incident

I've gone ahead and reverted this change which has been edit-warred over by Wolfwarrior81 and Horse Eye's Back. While the strict claim that the incident involving Zhao Lijan and Australia led to increased awareness of Australian war crimes is supported by the cited source, the way that it was incorporated into the article was insufficiently neutral and didn't appear to respect due weight across the several sources cited related to the incident.

It's currently not clear to me what the best way to frame the situation would be, as the events straddle the two existing sections of "proponents and practitioners" and [international] "response". As it stands, I think it's likely that we're focusing too much on one incident in an article about a much broader diplomatic tactic, and that a shorter summary of the incident would be appropriate. I'm leaning towards including such a summary in "Response" rather than in the "proponents and practitioners" as this specific incident does more to flesh out Australia's reaction than Lijan's activities. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Our current page doesn’t do it well but ideally we should separate responses to individual incidents from overall responses to wolf warrior diplomacy. Perhaps an “incidents” section or something like that instead of a proponents and practitioners section? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:28, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

While I think that eventually we probably could include something meaningful in a Practitioners section to cover people who've really built their names/careers on wolf warrior diplomacy, we don't have any such prose on hand right now so I agree with removing it. I'm not sure about "Incidents", as I think that would just invite editors to turn the article into a coatrack of incidents that have been labeled as wolf warrior diplomacy when we should really be focusing on a higher-level overview of the topic. I think that due coverage of the Australia incident could be included in the Response section. My first stab at a due writeup would be In late 2020, Australia demanded that China apologize for Zhao Lijian's promotion of a digitally-manipulated image of an Australian soldier cutting the throat of a child. China rejected the demands for an apology the next day. The incident had the effect of unifying Australian politicians in condemning China across party lines while also drawing attention to an Australian investigation of war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. The incident was further seen as a sign of deteriorating relations between Australia and China _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:00, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

The most complete coverage of the incident is at Zhao Lijian (the text here is mostly a condensed version of what was over there a few days ago), theres 30+ sources on the talk page plus the main page. Normally I’d say the easy solution would be to make a stand alone page for the incident but there doesn't really seem to be a name for it beyond "Zhao Lijan’s Australia tweet” or something like that. I think an argument can be made that the spat causing increased awareness of the Brereton Report but I don’t see it mentioned in the vast majority of sources and coverage of the Brereton Report was already so extensive I don’t thinks its something that can be measured in real time by news sources. Best to leave that to academics.

In terms of your suggested text I think there a few more things to cover: the fact that their rejection of the call for an apology was incredibly strong (I believe they literally invoked “Afghan lives matter” in some cruel parody of Black Lives Matter), we should mention Twitter because the venue is important, we should make some mention of the Brereton Report by name (most WP:RS do), and we should include the international response. I think we can also be stronger than “a sign of” because most of the reliable sources seem to be saying that Australia-China relations are at an all time low (with some even invoking wolf warrior diplomacy as a causal agent of that decline). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

As far as fleshing out coverage of the incident I don't have any issues with the suggested changes, but I'm wondering what level of detail we actually need in this article. If this turns out to be a defining moment in the history of the wolf warrior tactic then it deserves a fair amount of detail, but that sort of assessment won't be written for years, and until then I don't know that it helps our readers to devote much space to it here. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I think a fair bit of detail is reasonable, but you’re probably right that waiting for more circumspect coverage is the right call. Maybe a link to the subsection at Zhao Lijian can stand in for almost all of it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:27, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

@Rosguill:@Horse Eye's Back: thanks for the discussion above - I support the idea of a decent subsection on the incident on the Zhao Lijian page. I also find the suggested text provided by Rosguill helpful, and I think I might use it to set up that section. I believe it settles the question about the language we use: "promotion of a digitally-manipulated image of an Australian soldier cutting the throat of a child". Grateful for the time and thought from each of you.The Little Platoon (talk) 21:40, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

A plea here, for all subsequent opinions on this issue to move to Talk:Zhao Lijian for ease of discussions. Thank you all. NoNews! 01:14, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Section for PailSimon to do some explaining in

@PailSimon: this is where you should do some explaining and consensus reaching instead of edit warring. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:47, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The idea that there is "Chinese aggression" is obviously a contentious point of view that many would reject, the fact that one single source or even multiple sources accuse the Chinese of aggression does not mean Wikipedia should call it that. WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV seems to apply here.PailSimon (talk) 17:51, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Thats not a NPOV argument nor does WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV appear to apply here, “aggression” seems to be the neutral description here. Its also not an accusation, its simply a description of Chinese diplomatic behavior. You also invoked WP:LABEL in an edit summary but don’t seem willing to actually continue that line of argument. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Let me be more blunt, if Chinese diplomacy hadn’t gotten more aggressive over the last few years this page wouldn't exist. Don’t forget what page you’re commenting on. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:59, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

"writ large"

" Chinese leader and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping's foreign policy writ large" - please rewrite using plain term. "Writ large" is not only non-obvious for non-native (and may native) English speakers, but its meaning is non-unique. And I frankly fail to see logic in the usage of this expression here. Lembit Staan (talk) 20:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

"Machtpolitik"

Hello fellow Wikipedians. I have been bold, and added a potentially controversial link (Power Politics/Machtpolitik) in the "See Also" section at the end of this article. Please inform me or feel free to remove this if it is inappropriate or carries unacceptable bias.

Jamutaq (talk) 18:28, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi user:Jamutaq thanks for your bold editing! Apparently: your link had been removed from a long list of "See Also" links, at some point in the past couple of years. I think a better way to put "Wolf Warrior diplomacy" into a broader context would be to add a wikilink to this *style* of diplomacy wherever it is discussed in Diplomacy... but I don't see any directly-relevant section in that article. Power politics would be furthered by a style of "gunboat diplomacy"; whereas the label "Wolf Warrior diplomacy" denotes any form of Chinese diplomacy which is coercive in nature, including (but not limited to) "Hostage diplomacy". Some have called it "Hard Power" diplomacy, to distinguish it from the Soft Power which China had previously (and I believe still does!) regularly deploy in its international relations. All to say that I appreciate your work as a Wikipedian... and (unless someone objects) I think it's time to push your comment into the obscurity of a Talk contribution which has been deleted -- so that Wikipedians who edit this article can focus on topics of current interest for this article! cthombor (talk) 02:13, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

"Wolf culture"?

Is this conceptually related to the "wolf culture" embraced by some corporations?[1] If so, could the article discuss it? HLHJ (talk) 03:58, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi @HLHJ thanks for your suggestion. It's an intriguing one -- but if there's no reliable source which discusses this conceptual linkage I think it'd be out of scope for a Wikipedian to do the pyscholinguistic and historical research required to describe it.

I'd *guess* that a careful psycholinguistic study of the question you raise would have to wade through some intriguing differences between the connotation of 狼 in Chinese and "wolf" in English. Wolves in folklore, religion and mythology is a *huge* topic!

And... I do see one major difference between Huawei's 狼文化 ("wolf culture") and what Western analysts (since about 2020) have named China's "'Wolf Warrior' diplomacy" (with various capitalisations and punctuation). According to one article (which looks quite credible to me): 狼文化 was officially embraced by Huawei as the The Huawei way. By contrast, as far as I can tell, the phrase "'Wolf Warrior' diplomacy" was coined by a Western analyst in the first few months of 2020 -- as a way to describe, to an English-speaking audience, China's shift in diplomatic stance from one of "soft power" to one which relies mostly (or entirely, according to some accounts) on what is sometimes called "hard power". I have seen no evidence that China has ever embraced this phrase as a valid description of their diplomatic stance -- but hey that could change, and anyway "a rose is a rose by any other name" and "wolf warrior diplomacy" is now widely understood to mean any display of hard-power diplomacy from China.

In the interest of tidying up this Talk page so that it is more focussed on topics of current interest to Wikipedians, I propose to push this section into the (relative!) obscurity of a deleted entry in this Talk page's History. Are you ok with this? cthombor (talk) 02:52, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Origin of the "economic coercion" claim is a Washington D.C.-based think-tank

This claim that "It has been assessed that, between 2008 and 2022, China has economically coerced 16 countries" is citing the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that's closely affiliated with senior government officials of the U.S. government. I have added the "by whom?" tag at the "assessed" word because I think such geopolitical claims should reflect where it had originated, especially owing to the complex and frosty relations between China and the United States. 118.32.160.14 (talk) 17:16, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

The nature of wolf warrior diplomacy

A simple reading of the sources tells us that one of the main goals of wolf warrior diplomacy is not to assert one's legitimate rights or interests, but to intimidate and silence the critics. This is coercion, not "assertiveness". People who are familiar with the CCP and PRC know that this kind of tactic may work domestically, but it is ineffective (as expected) when it comes to foreign policy.

Unless there are substantial sources that say otherwise, it is recommended that editors discuss this issue before making changes in the lead regarding the nature of wolf warrior diplomacy.

References

Normchou ^💬 18:37, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I have found (and added) scholarly support for describing Wolf Warrior diplomacy as a coercive style of diplomacy. I have also amended the lead to include (with references) several other forms of diplomacy that have been employed by China in recent years. cthombor (talk) 22:58, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Films

There does not seem to be any evidence that the term "wolf warrior diplomacy" was used in response to the first Wolf Warrior film in 2015. All mentions come after the sequel Wolf Warrior 2 in 2017. The first film had a purely domestic setting and did not delve into overseas issues as the sequel did. Ngrams is also useful here a data point. Would be open to evidence otherwise. - Amigao (talk) 20:20, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Your research probably reflects a lag between literature and the first film. The term is not a response to the films themselves: Therefore, Western media originally proposed the term “wolf warrior diplomacy” in response to Beijing’s radical and aggressive media and diplomatic statements during the COVID-19 pandemic. from your source, so we're describing only the terminology not any of the motivations. CurryCity (talk) 20:50, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Peter Martin, who authored another of your source, referred to both "a series of recent popular Chinese war movies" and "named after two jingoistic action films released in 2015 and 2017".[2][3] CurryCity (talk) 20:58, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

This is a good point, one issue that we might be running in to is that in many markets Wolf Warrior 2 was released as Wolf Warrior (the orginal never having been released in those markets). I think this is why a lot of sources just refer to the franchise and not a specific film. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:52, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks User:Amigao for your care in looking into the origin of the phrase "Wolf Warrior diplomacy". I, too, have looked in vain for any use of this phrase prior to the release of Wolf Warrior 2. Indeed: my earliest sighting of this phrase in a publication is a usage on 8 May 2020. That said: in the continued absence of anyone taking public credit for coining this phrase, I think it'll remain uncertain whether it was in common usage in some circles, prior to the 2017 release of Wolf Warrior 2 or even prior to the 2015 release of the original Wolf Warrior! cthombor (talk) 23:10, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Response

In my recent edits to the Response and head, I have attempted to neutrally document the conflict over how China's diplomatic stance could best be described, reasonably accurately and concisely, to English-speaking folks who aren't already familiar with the various styles of diplomacy which have been deployed -- over the millennia -- by various countries.

As with any other article on a controversial topic, some Wikipedians have strongly-held beliefs about what the article "should" say, and whether it'd be "teaching the controversy" to give any credibility to a point of view which doesn't align with their beliefs. Deciding such issues is, I'd say, part of the "fun" of being a Wikipedian -- if we do the sorting with respectful discussion on a Talk page! cthombor (talk) 01:42, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

Overview

I'd love to see some valiant Wikipedian rewrite the Overview section (sometime in the next few years) so that it 1) has a clearer narrative organisation (without repetitions/reworkings of ideas introduced in earlier paragraphs), and 2) so that it isn't (IMHO!) so China-critical in its tone and coverage.

Better yet: there'd be a major reorganisation, in which all of the topics that are discussed in the current Overview section would be shifted into some other section. For example, I think a few paragraphs would be more appropriately placed in the Response section. However I'm not volunteering for this task, because I think Wikipedia is doing quite well to have a C-rated article on a topic that is still exciting diplomatic tension, scholarly attention, and public opinion. cthombor (talk) 01:48, 23 January 2025 (UTC)