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Bezig met laden... China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacydoor Peter Martin
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  nwhyte | Jul 22, 2021 | 
 To write China’s Civilian Army, Bloomberg’s Peter Martin interviewed dozens of diplomats, and trawled though more than 100 volumes of memoirs by major and minor figures alike. He finds no shocking revelations; even when written under pseudonyms and published during periods of relative political openness, these books were still censored. Nevertheless, Martin still manages to extract titbits that reveal the petty victories and pratfalls of those on the front line of modern China’s diplomatic development. He also shows that China’s wolf-like approach is, in fact, long in the tooth, and China’s diplomatic service is still operating in the same pseudo-military style instituted in 1949 by its founder, Zhou Enlai. --- “Chinese envoys are behaving so undiplomatically because they are unable to extricate themselves from the constraints of a secretive, paranoid political system,” says Martin. “Quietly, many understand that their behaviour is contributing to a global backlash against China.” Martin’s measured and readable account succeeds in making China’s self-destructive approach understandable, and its diplomats human. China’s diplomacy is neutered by always concentrating on the needs of the Party; the “wolf warriors” are merely doing tricks for their masters in Beijing, and they remain the house pets they always were – just sheep in wolf’s clothing.
"China's Civilian Army tells the story of China's transformation from an isolated and impoverished communist state to a global superpower from the perspective of its diplomats. In the early days of the People's Republic, diplomats were highly-disciplined, committed communists who feared revealing any weakness to the threatening capitalist world. Remarkably, the model that revolutionary leader Zhou Enlai established continues to this day despite the massive changes the country has undergone in recent decades. Even today, Chinese diplomats work in pairs so that one can always watch the other for signs of ideological impurity. China's Civilian Army charts the history of China's diplomatic corps from its earliest days through to the present, drawing on the memoirs of more than a hundred retired diplomats and dozens of interviews"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)327.51Social sciences Political Science International Relations Asia China & KoreaLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4.17)
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Peter Martin was a colleague of mine when I started in my current workplace, but left to go back to Beijing as a reporter for Bloomberg. He's now in Washington working Bloomberg's defence beat, but has used his time in China profitably to write this excellent book on China's diplomatic service.
The first thing to say is that this book is (thank heavens) not for the China specialist. I confess I knew far less than I should about the history of the Communist Party and the People's Republic, and because the foreign ministry, the subject of this book, was very much the creation of Zhou Enlai. Peter is clear and lucid on this complex history. Chinese diplomacy was set up from scratch in 1949, all previous Chinese diplomats having been part of the old regime; the diplomats were senior Red Army officers, with no knowledge of diplomacy and often no experience of the world outside China. The isolation of the regime by other countries did not help. It seems incredible now that Taiwan was allowed to occupy China's place at the UN for more than twenty years after losing the war. Mutual suspicion between China and its international interlocutors was deep, and for good reason.
With that unpromising start, Chinese diplomacy is very different from that of other countries. Every country of course has its own style, reflecting national characteristics. But Chinese diplomats are unusual in two respects. They tend not to make friends outside their own service, and they tend to stick to their talking points rather than actually engage in a conversation. They are happy to pick fights over protocol, even when clearly in the wrong. This is of course the result of working for a bureaucracy which is internally paranoid and conscious of vulnerability to accusations of foreign influence. At one point in the 1990s, concerned citizens started sending calcium tablets to the ministry's headquarters, to help it build some backbone.
The Ministry also had the sharp end of explaining some of the more traumatic moments of recent history. It was badly affected by the Cultural Revolution, and one gets the sense that that experience still runs deep in bureaucratic China. The Tian-an-Men massacre of June 1989 was another key moment which reversed any recent international gains for China. NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 was another low point, inflicted by the West. On the other hand, there were also successes like the Beijing Olympics, and China's rapid re-positioning as an ally in the war on terror from 2001.
Taiwan continues to be a diplomatic irritant. I've once or twice been caught in the slipstream of this one myself; I organised a Brussels speaking opportunity for the then Taiwanese government spokesman in 2000, and was struck by the number of mainland Chinese who turned up to heckle him in the audience. Twelve years later, I organised a speaking opportunity for a senior government official from one of the dwindling number of states that recognise Taiwan. In his speech, he mentioned the People's Republic favourably and Taiwan not at all. Literally before he had sat down from speaking, he had been called by both sides asking if this meant a shift of policy. He grinned, having achieved exactly what he wanted - a very small country getting two bigger, richer rivals to compete for his affections.
Anyway, this book was published literally last week, and it's a great backgrounder on China as a whole and on its undiplomatic diplomats in particular. Strongly recommended. (