Beijing s Wolf Warriors in Alaska | City Journal
Many in the West were surprised when top Chinese diplomats lashed out against the United States publicly during the first high-level meeting between the Biden and Xi Jinping administrations last week in Anchorage, Alaska. Though smaller powers like Australia and Sweden have experienced Beijing s wolf-warrior diplomacy before, rarely have Chinese diplomats displayed such open condescension toward the U.S. Yet if one understands the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party, the performance in Alaska comes as no surprise.
Claremont McKenna s Minxin Pei describes the CCP as an entity that treats the world as a jungle, in which long-term survival depends solely on raw power and might makes right. Since its founding, the CCP has been deeply hostile to Western democracies and liberal values. The party believes that its survival depends on destroying the liberal world order and establishing a new one in which China is the hegemon. From 1949 to 1979, internal political turmoil and misguided economic policies derailed this plan and almost destroyed China, but despite many subsequent changes, the party never gave up this goal.
Long before MAGA was a twinkle in Donald Trump s eye, the CCP realized that it must rely on investment and technology from the West to make China great again. Unlike the Soviets, the CCP learned to be patient, flexible, and cunning when it was weak. But as the balance of power has since shifted in its favour, Pei writes, the CCP has consistently been willing to break its earlier commitments when doing so serves its interests.
That darn CCP. Have to admit, I neither like it nor trust it.