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Chinese Communist Party: from isolation to heavyweight in the diplomatic ring

By Jesús Centeno

Beijing, Jun 28 (EFE).- The Communist Party of China will celebrate its 100th anniversary Thursday, as it challenges G7 supremacy, contests NATO operations and demands its place and equal treatment among the world’s great powers.

This assertiveness of recent years represents a shift from the traditional “keep a low profile” strategy of Chinese communists, whose biggest support during the party’s tough beginnings was the former USSR.

Moscow’s technical and financial aid did not prevent an eventual ideological confrontation with China, which would later denounce the Soviet Union for acting as a “social imperialist superpower.”

Today, the Asian country accounts for 20% of the world’s GDP, surpasses the United States in volume of diplomatic missions and does not shy away from defying NATO.

“The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone,” asserted China’s embassy in London in response to the G7 summit in mid-June.

According to Mario Esteban, researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute think tank, China plays a double-faced game: “On the one hand, they claim the country is still developing and cannot be asked to accommodate certain things. On the other, they insist on calling for special treatment as a world power, to maximize their influence.”

Spanish international relations expert Xulio Ríos says Beijing sharpened its fangs when Donald Trump launched a trade war against China, kicking off a series of financial, technological and ideological clashes.

The state has been subject to accusations concerning the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, human rights violations against the Uighur community in the Xinjiang province, and the rollback of democratic freedoms in Hong Kong.

Thus, the “warrior wolf diplomacy” came to be, as Chinese public officers became assertive and combative.

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