Wolf Warriors in the West: how China’s diplomats are taking to Twitter

Are foreign affairs spokespeople and Chinese diplomats creating bold social media posts outside official channels or is it part of a grand plan?

The Twitter style of US President Donald Trump has influenced China’s diplomatic social media accounts, with all-cap posts and exclamation marks, observer says

Reading Time:6 minutes

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying. She saw potential for the Chinese government to use Western social media to change the conversation and perceptions around China. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:00am, 1 Jan 2021Updated: 4:20pm, 14 Aug 2023

In the summer of 2019, into her seventh year as a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Hua Chunying was just about to finish four months of study at the Central Party School – the main training ground for senior Communist Party cadres.

The diplomat, then aged 49, wrote in an article for the school newspaper Study Times about the need for Beijing to get its message across online around the world.

“We must … enter overseas social media to give wings to China’s moral power and ensure that the Chinese discourse captures the moral high ground as soon as possible,” Hua wrote.

It was just days after Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, made his debut post on Twitter, a social media platform banned in China.

As an active and outspoken Twitter user Zhao Lijian, a counsellor at the Chinese embassy in Pakistan, was unusual among his colleagues, often posting or reposting dozens of tweets a day. Photo: Kyodo

Ten days after the article was published, Hua was promoted to head the MFA’s information department, marking the start of an era of vocal Twitter activity for China’s diplomats.

In their attempts to tell China’s side of the story, these official Twitter accounts have regularly pushed the message of multilateralism. But they have sometimes taken an aggressive Wolf Warrior approach, a term that comes from a Chinese film of the same name depicting Chinese special forces fighting foreign mercenaries in Africa.