Cautious Wolf Warrior: Domestic and International Drivers Behind China's Diplomatic Rhetoric

In the late 2010s, Western commentators began describing China’s increasingly assertive diplomatic style as “wolf warrior diplomacy,” characterized by confrontational and nationalist rhetoric. Chinese diplomats are not consistently “wolf warriors.” On the South China Sea issue, China’s diplomatic rhetoric varies across time and towards different countries. What drives these variations? Existing literature on physical aggression suggests two mechanisms that can be applied to the case of rhetorical aggression. First, states are less likely to take escalatory actions when they are economically dependent on the adversary. Second, leaders are more likely to escalate international conflicts when they need to divert the public’s attention from domestic problems. I collected data and conducted sentiment analysis on 496 Ministry of Foreign Affairs statements during South China disputes from 2014 to 2023. With panel data regression analysis, I found that China’s rhetoric becomes less aggressive when it is economically dependent, especially in imports, on the targeted country. There is no correlation between domestic shocks, such as slowing economic growth and widespread disasters, and China’s rhetorical aggressiveness. Speech frequency and word choice analyses show that Chinese rhetoric is mostly responsive, rather than proactive, and often includes narratives about regional peace and cooperation. While verifying China’s policymaking mechanisms falls beyond the scope of this thesis, my findings suggest Chinese foreign policy’s high responsiveness to international factors, as opposed to domestic concerns. They highlight China’s priority to preserve economic prospects and regional stability, which would in turn bolster the regime’s legitimacy, offering an insight into the authoritarian black box’s foreign policymaking calculus.