Zhao Lijian


Zhao Lijian is a Chinese politician and the current deputy director of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department. He is the 31st spokesperson since the position was established in 1983. He joined the Foreign Service in 1996 and has served primarily in Asia. Zhao gained notoriety during his time serving in Pakistan for his outspoken use of Twitter, a social network website that is blocked within China. He has been identified as a prominent leader of the new generation of "China's 'Wolf Warrior' Diplomats."

Biography

Zhao was born in Hebei on November 10, 1972. He joined the Department of Asian Affairs in 1996. He obtained a master's degree in public policy from the Korea Development Institute in 2005. In 2009, he became secretary of the Embassy of China in Washington, D.C. In 2013, he was recalled to the Department of Asian Affairs. From 2015 to August 2019, he served as counsellor and minister counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad. During his tenure there, he used the name “Muhammad Lijian Zhao” on his official Twitter account, but dropped “Muhammad” in 2017 right after China banned several Islamic names in Xinjiang.
Zhao became well known for his frequent use of Twitter to criticize the United States, including on topics such as race relations and the United States foreign policy in the Middle East. In July 2019, he engaged in a contentious dispute with Susan Rice, a former national security advisor to President Barack Obama, regarding China's mass internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Susan Rice called him a "racist disgrace", and the dispute raised Zhao's profile in Beijing.
He has been deputy director of Foreign Ministry Information Department of the People's Republic of China since August 2019.

COVID-19

At a March 2020 press conference, Zhao said "no conclusion has been reached yet on the origin of the virus, as relevant tracing work is still underway." On Twitter, Zhao condemned United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for using the term "Wuhan virus", and retweeted Americans who were accusing Republicans of racism and xenophobia.
Later in March, Zhao promoted a conspiracy theory that the United States military could have brought the novel coronavirus to China. On March 12, Zhao tweeted, first in English and separately in Chinese:
When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!

Zhao accompanied his post with a video of Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, addressing a US Congressional committee on March 11. Redfield had said some Americans who had seemingly died from influenza later tested positive for the new coronavirus. Redfield did not say when those people had died or over what time period.
On March 13, Zhao urged his followers to share an allegation from a conspiracy website that the disease originated in the US. The allegation was apparently linked to the United States' participation at the 2019 Military World Games held in Wuhan in October, well before any reported outbreaks. Zhao's tweet linked to an article from the Centre for Research on Globalization. BuzzFeed News reported that in the article, "Larry Romanoff, a regular writer for the site who has posted a bevy of misinformation about the coronavirus, cites a Chinese study, covered by Global Times, that claimed the virus began in late November somewhere else than Wuhan."
The US State Department summoned Chinese ambassador Cui Tiankai on March 13 to protest about Zhao's comments. During an interview on Axios on HBO, Cui distanced himself from Zhao's comments and said speculating about the origin of the virus was "harmful".
In April 2020, Zhao defended his tweets, saying his posts were "a reaction to some U.S. politicians stigmatizing China a while ago."