That's because for a long time, CCP propaganda dept has done a poor job. Just look at how they handle the media businesses. CCP is wasting money on CGTN, CCTV etc, trying to spread the messages through these vehicles labelled as propaganda by most countries in the world. Only Chinese and Overseas Chinese watched them, and even they didn't buy every thing those media sell.
The problem with them is that they have their hands tied. CCP is a controlling freak, that can't tolerate even a single grain of bad news. So every thing is always fine and dandy in CGTN etc. All negative news about China are surpressed. There is hardly any bad news or sharp analytical debate in it. You know what they said about bad news in news businesses. In a word, they are BORING. They should learn from how Qatar handled Al Jazeera.
Instead of wasting money on media that nobody watch, the money is better spent on acquiring foreign media that are popular in their respective nations. It won't be cheap, but it is worth the money. Focus on acquiring the ones in Asia, Africa and Latin America, maybe in Eastern Europe too. Forget about the ones in the west. China is in a battle of public opinion with the west. Moreover, instead of focusing on surpressing negative news about China, CCP better focus on providing balance point of views to counter those negative news. The more you try to surpress the negative news, the more people buy into it.
As for diplomats like Zhao, he may have his own agenda, or he may not. What we knows are all from western propaganda, that Zhao maybe doing that for promotion. But it doesn't matter. What matter is that I think the day of non confrontational diplomacy is over.
Anyone here wonder why despite having the second largest military budget in the world, and one of the top five nuclear powers in the world, China become a punching bag in the US political circles? Why there are regularly a senator or congressman talking about war with China? Why not Russia? Why they keep intruding in taiwan affairs, but stay silent on Crimea that is annexed by Russia?
That is because the west know, or at least they think, China will be a rational power, that China will do the right thing, that China will not retaliate. This is like Korean war again, when the US ignored Chinese warning over and over again.
There is a saying, the Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else. From western perspective, China is the opposite. Therefor, the west considered provoking China is a cheap thing to do. Because they expect China to always restraint itself in the face of provocation, which China indeed has done since the opening of the economy.
But time has changed. China is in a battle of supremacy with the US, whether the Chinese like it or not, want it or not. China is already the second largest economy in the world. The US provocations have begun to evolve into real attempt to destroy China. Just look at Huawei and other Chinese companies blacklisted by the US. Just look at how the Xinjiang cotton is banned, the US started it, and the EU companies followed suit because they think it is better to provoke China than the US, that is until the boycott surprised them. I guarantee you, they will treat China more carefully in the future.
Wolf warrior diplomacy is a necessity. Will the west, I mean the EU, and the rest of the world realize that China isn't a punching bag, but can punch back when provoked? There are signs of divide in EU today, some want to jump into the US bandwagon, they are mostly liberals, military and intelligence which mostly got their funding from US aid; some want to distant their countries from the US and carve their own China policy that is more neutral. You won't get that with lame duck diplomacy.
