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ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic gave new impetus to the influence of face and status on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the political leadership of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Occurring when relations between the PRC and the liberal-democratic world were already tense, the pandemic introduced a new vector into a highly politicised context involving domestic and global audiences. It caused the CCP acute embarrassment, undermined its status ambition, and intensified an extant resentment towards perceived competitors and critical voices. Anxieties about loss of face and status manifested in the histrionics and policies of CCP/PRC officials and state media towards the United States and Australia.
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Notes
1 Inter alia, it decisively influenced the Australia/United Kingdom/United States (AUKUS) initiative (US Embassy & Consulates in Australia Citation2021).
2 The political system in practice diverges from certain cultural rules or principles, such as avoiding confrontation and aggression, expressing sincerity, and striving for harmony.
3 Compare the statement on the PRC of the then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in Gries (Citation2009, 220) and see Scobell (Citation2020, 643) on similarities between Trump and Xi.
4 At least 45 other states had already done so, including PRC client, North Korea, which suspended flights from 25 January and closed its borders on 30 January (Kiernan and DeVita Citation2020). Some US commentators criticised Trump for not stopping travel from the PRC earlier (Bollyky and Nuzzo Citation2020).
5 Robert Boxwell (Citation2020) wrote: ‘One wonders how much longer Washington will continue fighting the information war against Beijing with one arm tied behind its back. Chinese media enjoy free run of the US, including on Twitter. The US has no such freedom in China’. Cf. Zhang (Citation2021).
6 Matthew Kroenig (Citation2020) conceived the relationship as the latest in a history of competition between democracy and autocracy.
7 This was from the leadership of a state which had received billions of dollars in US’, Australian, and other aid, and further concessions as a ‘developing country’. Payne was criticised by some Australian media, political, and other sources for publicly raising the issue. Most critics accented that she had not engaged the US or EU in a common front thereby leaving Australia exposed to the CCP’s overreaction.
8 In its World Press Freedom Index, Reporters without Borders (Citation2021) rated the PRC 177 of 180 states, above Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Eritrea.
9 Wang mentioned that ‘In March this year, Mr. Jack Ma donated 2.15 million Australian dollars to the Peter Doherty Institute in Melbourne for the purpose of early discovery of a coronavirus vaccine. Papa Alibaba sees the sunshine of shared human destiny breaking through the cloud of ideological paranoia, which we believe will be blown away with the strong breath of history’. A few months later Ma had fallen out of favour with the political hierarchy (Brooker Citation2021).
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Steve Wood
Steve Wood is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of four books and many articles including in Cooperation and Conflict, Review of International Studies, Energy Policy, International Relations, and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. His research interests include status, affect and emotion in international affairs, International Relations theories, nationalism and national identity, European politics, and German-Russian relations.