Thread by @wentisung

China's MFA's Feb 5 statement on US shooting down the balloon is Beijing building an off-ramp for itself.

It tries to a) project rhetorical toughness, and b) deescalate at the same time. And this is not as self-contradictory as it sounds. /1🧵

2/ There's a Chinese saying, 打左灯向右转, "signal left in order to turn right". i.e. talk tough to get political cover for a safe retreat/soften-down.

With tough rhetoric, 'retreats' don't have to be retreats, but 'strategic redirections'.

3/ It’s in damage control mode. The most obvious sign is how it frames the victim of US shooting down the balloons.

MFA: "China will resolutely defend the legitimate rights of the relevant company". (中方将坚决维护有关企业的正当权益).

4/ It says US action hurt a private Chinese company's (property) rights, not China's national interest.

Therefore the Chinese state is under no obligation to provide a commensurate military response -- no need to defend China’s nat' interests, since no Chinese interest was hurt.

5/ Beijing is trying to limit domestic nationalism pressure, hinting that it's not applicable, because it's a private sector matter.

6/ Though sometimes even private sector matters do escalate, e.g. #Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou’s detention in Canada. But hopefully this time nationalist backlish will be manageable, for unlike Meng, unmanned balloons don’t have a human face to the incident.

7/ MFA also says: “China reserves the right to make further necessary response”. (同时保留作出进一步必要反应的权利。)

Even though it may sound ominous, this is really codeword for “we aren’t actively planning to do anything at the moment”.

8/ Moreover, the flipside of that is “we will only do something if US doesn’t stop there”.

Which means if US reframes from making China looking worse (e.g. by publicizing what sensitive things are foundin the balloon), the shooting itself can kind of be water under the bridge.

9/ But Chinese nationalism is a wildcard here, and contains real risk of hijacking Chinese diplomatic apparatus’ attempt at damage control.

It probably doesn’t help matters that the top 2 movies at China’s box office this week both touch on this balloon…

10/ #1 hit movie is ‘Wandering Earth 2’ (流浪地球2), a sci-fi about China leading humans into space exploration.

MFA’s constant calling the unmanned balloon as an aircraft (飞艇) has international law utility, but will strengthen unfortunate political association with the movie

11/ For international law dimension, see this insightful analysis by @aurelsari.

https://twitter.com/aurelsari/status/1622164939417817088

12/ 2nd top movie is ‘Full River Red’ (滿江紅), about a 12th Century Chinese nationalist war hero, who fought uphill battles against foreigners, but got defanged and backstabbed by spineless bureaucrat-diplomats who preferred doing backdoor diplomatic solutions with the enemy.

13/ Last week Chinese social media is full of movie goers screaming passionate reading of the nationalist hero’s poem (eponym of the movie’s title). E.g. see this footage:

China’s propaganda apparatus likely played a role in fanning this.

14/ Sample passages:

“I swear we'd feed on the flesh of the barbarians and cheerfully drink their blood.
The day we recover what used to be our territory,
We'd pay our respect in the direction of the Gate of Heaven.”

壯志飢餐胡虜肉，笑談渴飲匈奴血。待從頭、收拾舊山河，朝天闕。

15/ Pretty bad timing on propaganda and possibly CYL's parts.

If this popular nationalist passion gets linked up with the US shooting of Chinese balloon, it will create huge political pressure for the MFA, and risk derailing MFA’s attempt to calm the waters.

16/ Strong temptation to bow to the pressure and briefly return to wolf warrior diplomacy til March.

By March’s Natl People’s Congress, the complete lineup of new Chinese leaders will be sworn in. It's an opportunity for a reset in China's diplomatic style & domestic governance