China's assertiveness and the rise of 'Wolf Warrior' diplomacy

What is the background to this "new" style of diplomacy?

Well, it gets its name from the two Wolf Warrior Chinese war action films: Wolf Warrior and Wolf Warrior II.

Wolf Warrior was directed by Wu Jing and starred Wu Jing and Scott Adkins in the main roles. The film took seven years to make. and was released in China on April 2, 2015. It earned $51 million on its opening weekend, a box office record at the time.

The better-funded sequel, Wolf Warrior II, was released in China on July 27, 2017. It is more sophisticated than its predecessor, and has been a huge commercial success - becoming the highest-grossing Chinese film ever released.

What is significant about these films is that they combine action and People's Liberation Army special forces in a way not seen before by Chinese audiences.

In the first film, Wu Jing plays Leng Feng, a crack marksman in the PLA who is reprimanded for failing to obey a direct order during an operation. However, he is subsequently recruited into the "War Wolf" special forces unit. The unit's members, known as "Wolf Warriors", are taught the importance of fighting skills and teamwork for success.

Their main adversary is a group of mercenaries led by ex-US navy SEAL Tom Cat (Scott Adkins). Ming Deng, a drug lord, hires the mercenaries to avenge his brother's death at the hands of Leng Feng. Eventually, Leng Feng, although wounded and exhausted, engages in one-on-one knife combat with Tom Cat and kills him after a desperate struggle.

Most of the film was shot on location in China's Jiangsu province, at sites that included the city of Nanjing and the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum.

To make the combat scenes more realistic, the film used five missiles (each valued at more than $200,000), more than 30,000 rounds of ammunition, and a variety of Chinese military aircraft, including the Chengdu J-10, Harbin Z-9, and CAIC Z-10. In one battle scene 32 tanks appear in the same shot.

The second film, Wolf Warrior II, sees China's deadliest special forces operative (Leng Feng of course) settled into a quiet life by the sea - but before long he finds himself in Africa, protecting medical aid workers from local rebels and arms dealers. This time the mercenaries are led by Big Daddy (Frank Grillo), the ruthless American leader of the mercenary Dyon Corps.

The films have been characterised by some critics as blatant pro-Chinese, anti-American propaganda, but they are probably no more so than similar American special forces action films considered patriotic by American audiences.

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The Wolf Warrior films are clearly very popular with Chinese audiences and add a new nationalistic PLA special forces element to martial arts movies.

It always struck me as odd that toy shops in China sold Chinese-made toys featuring American military vehicles and aircraft - but not Chinese ones. That may be changing, with increased pride in China's military. Anyone in China under the age of 35 probably knows little about the PLA's killing of up to 2000 student demonstrators at Tiananmen in 1989.

Whether Wolf Warrior diplomacy will be more effective than traditional, behind-the-scenes diplomacy remains to be seen. The Chinese people are by nature conservative, team-oriented and cautious.

The new dynamic approach could be characteristic of a younger generation, often schooled in the West, who have been exposed to more assertive Western behaviour - and, of course, Wolf Warrior movies.

Wolf Warrior diplomacy as a style is actually nothing new. American and Russian ambassadors have been practising it for decades.