Most chief diplomats understand their job requires them to listen, build trust, and forge compromise where possible.
Not Wang Yi. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany this weekend, China’s foreign policy chief sought to remind us just how bad a diplomat he is.
This is hardly news to foreign diplomats who have dealt with Wang. Even for a high-level Chinese diplomat, Wang is notorious for being unusually dismissive and rude. He is loath to engage pragmatically and almost fanatical in his adherence to Communist Party talking points. Still, Wang is powerful, heading both the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission and the foreign ministry. He came to hold this dual role after his foreign minister predecessor disappeared without explanation (an increasingly popular Xi Jinping pastime).
Wang’s speech was full of the traditional CCP talking points. But his Q&A session with Christoph Heusgen stood out for its ridiculousness.
If China is honest in stating its interest in upholding territorial integrity, Heusgen asked, why is it buffering the Russian economy with vast trade even as President Vladimir Putin wages war on Ukraine? Wang responded by referencing nuclear weapons and ignoring the substance of the question. It is unclear why Heusgen didn’t push him to answer the question directly — except, that is, when one considers that Heusgen was former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s key foreign policy adviser. This explains a lot, being that Merkel was Beijing’s great and reliable friend. Merkel’s strategy toward China could be summed up in six words: German exports, German exports, German exports.
Amusingly underlining as much, Heusgen next asked Wang why German car manufacturers were facing new challenges in China over their (very tentative) efforts to avoid economic complicity in China’s genocide against the Uyghur people. That genocide is undeniable in the vast array of witness reports and Chinese government documents that evince it. Even the U.N. Human Rights Commission has found evidence against China. Wang could have addressed these concerns with a modicum of nuance, perhaps by suggesting some officials had made mistakes, but most Uyghurs have been treated well. It would have been a big lie but one that at least tipped a hat to the European audience. Wang preferred to enter full defiance mode.
Any and all allegations of human rights abuses against the Uyghurs are, he insisted, the product of “sheer fabrication.” He further explained that anyone was able to visit Xinjiang for themselves in order to see the truth.
But this open invitation is itself a lie, one proven by the apparatus of delays and harassment suffered by anyone who truly attempts to see Xinjiang for themselves. In reality, China defends its Xinjiang record with a mix of angry denials, propaganda stunts, and bought-and-paid-for nations such as the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. The problem for Wang and his master Xi is that no one actually believes this total denial extravaganza. Wang’s approach to the issue only serves to damage his own diplomatic credibility.
Heusgen next asked about the South China Sea and Taiwan, where China is flexing its military muscles in support of vast, if ridiculous, territorial claims. Related risks of conflict are growing each day. Much as with Putin, however, Wang denied China’s aggression with a mix of creative history. Offering no criticism of Hamas, he then lambasted Israel over the situation in Gaza, something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might find a little uncomfortable after his years of anti-American kowtowing to Beijing.
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Reaching his crescendo, Wang regurgitated the go-to Chinese Communist talking points. He claimed, for example, that we’re all “passengers on the same boat.” Wang presumably excludes citizens of Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, being that they are regularly subject to Chinese attacks while sailing on their own boats in their own exclusive economic zones.
Wang finished the interview in the only way he could, referencing the need “to seek win-win” cooperation. It’s a favored Chinese Communist line but, as with Wang’s diplomacy, one defined by a very hollow core.