BEIJING: Lijian Zhao, a brash and outspoken diplomat who exemplified Beijing’s “wolf warrior” turn against the West, will no longer serve as a foreign ministry spokesman, a Chinese government website showed on Monday.

Zhao took up the post of foreign ministry spokesperson in 2020, after making headlines with controversial tweets as an envoy to Pakistan.

He became notorious as part of an army of Chinese diplomats known as “wolf warriors”, offering a more vociferous defence of the Communist-led country on social media platforms such as Twitter, which is blocked in China.

Zhao promoted conspiracy theories, including that the US military might have brought Covid-19 to China.

He also sparked outrage in Canberra when he posted an illustration of an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to a child’s throat, prompting condemnation by Australia’s prime minister.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2023