I don’t know if it hurts foreign relations on the world stage, considering how brands, businesses and countries still pander to the snowflakes.
But it certainly makes China a laughing stock to the regular people.
Chinese people are not “trash.” Members of the older diaspora are incredibly resilient, surviving all manner of abuse in places around the world including my home country Canada.
PRC folks who went through the Cultural Revolution are, in my experience, humble decent people. The awful things they saw made a deep impression on many of them.
The real culprit here is the Chinese state, which ramped up “patriotic education” as a way to try to manage the contradictions and unrest after Tiananmen. Not all folks have been damaged by this, but a bunch have, and some of the unreflective swagger that we hear nowadays is I think a result of this.
Guy
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Xi himself went through the Cultural Revolution. Doesn’t mean jack shit.
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He is a very dangerous man. The fact there is one of him does not disprove my basic point.
Guy
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I don’t agree, I think it is way more complex than that. It’s always a pull and push between different factions between MOFA and other department within the party. China has excellent , well trained , erudite diplomats who can turn on the charm successfully, see Beijing Olympics
At the same time there is a sense that China was bullied in the past and should not be pushed around now. The Chinese MOFA is militarized from the beginning and since it’s start was manned by PLA members and it’s run with military rigeur. Diplomats are always being judged by their loyalty and adherence to party lines.
Just read an excellent book on this 
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Well they certainly haven’t been trying lately. Everyone hates China now.
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I think they are still friends with Pakistan.
And Cambodia’s President-for-life still works them. Fewer pesky questions about killing political opponents and all that.
Guy
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Depends on what they are trying to achieve. Xi is the one who encouraged all these middling nobodies like Zhao Lijian to go all bulldog on Twitter.
Again most of this is for domestic audiences. Hawkish Chinese and 小粉紅 lap it up
China has two allies, which is Iran and Pakistan
There are a lot of countries that have favorable views of China, mostly in the developing world.The Belt and Road on the whole has been a success.
We don’t feel that way because our worldview is ethnocentric
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They used to be able to switch it on and off, but since Xi’s extremism, all they resort to is Wolf Warrior diplomacy.
All irrelevant and poor as shit. Other than Singapore, China is extremely unpopular in every single developed country. The only relevant ally China has is Russia, an economic midget.
Greece seems to be happy with the PRC.
I hear Serbia is like that too.
Guy
Greece is hardly a developed country.
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I was being ironic. : P
Guy
Yeah that Pew poll is basically all the “West” plus Japan Korea. Everyone knows those countries are anti China. That’s the kind of ethnocentrism I’m talking about
The growth opportunities are in Africa and Latin America, if you people think those countries don’t matter, then will kind of get a wakeup call.
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Yes agree, Xi has enabled the wolf warriors and the worst behavior. It’s kind of his mandate as a ethnonationalist populist though, his hardcore supporters in and out the party fucking love it
Meanwhile diplomats in Europe are appalled by the bald face lying they get from the PRC’s diplomatic corps.
Something’s gotta give.
Guy
Also put it this way, a lot of developing countries might not love China but love their model of development. They envy what China has achieved and want to emulate.
The UN, NGO‘s and US has been all bluster and hypocrisy the last few decades. The China model is becoming much more attractive and the US has shit it’s pants on too many occasions to have moral authority
Right but they still trade with China.
I agree China has made a lot of enemies, but the trope that the whole world is turning against China is misguided
Those countries account for more than half of the world economy.
They don’t matter. Latin America is firmly in USA’s grip except Cuba and Venezuela, so even if the people there do like China, it doesn’t matter.
Secondly, neither Latin America nor Africa has been growing. At least not impressievly.
When people refer to “developing” or “emerging” economies for the future, they are largely unaware of the fact that a lot of them are actually withering economies. Other than a few exceptions, Africa and Latin America’s growth is tragic. Their largest economies like South Africa, Nigeria, Argentina and Brazil either have been stagnant for years or are even contracting. Their currencies are a complete joke. Growing economies in those continents are the small and irrelevant ones like Uruguay.
Other than China, the only developing country with impressive growth in the recent decade is India, which is a larger economy than all of Africa combined AND has seen stronger growth than Africa, and they HATE China just as much as the West does, if not more. The trtuh is China’s friendships in Africa and Central Asia are almost completely useless other than when China needs votes at the UN. These countries are thoroughly beyond help.
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If you think the developing world doesn’t matter, then that’s on you tbh. Countries like Nigeria have the potential to be very wealthy
Fact is China is building a sphere of influence outside of the “West” and has been successful in doing so the last two decades.
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