China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, widely regarded as a "wolf warrior" diplomat, especially for his aggressive remarks and tweets against the US and other countries, has been transferred to the ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs.
Before he was appointed a spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in 2019, Zhao, 50, served as Deputy Ambassador to the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad.
He used to speak about his posting in Pakistan in laudatory terms at his press briefings as the spokesman of the Foreign Minister whenever he answered a question on the country.
While there is no official announcement here about his transfer, his name has been removed from the list of spokespersons on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website and added as Deputy Director General of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, which largely deals with China's claims and agreements related to land and ocean boundaries.
Significantly, his transfer coincides with the appointment of Qin Gang, Beijing’s envoy to the US as China's new Foreign Minister, replacing the incumbent Wang Yi.
In his farewell message from the US, Qin, who is a close confidant of President Xi Jinping, said his priority is to improve the strained ties between China and the US.
Zhao, who began his posting as spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in 2019, came to the limelight with his tweet accusing the US Army of bringing coronavirus to China in March 2020 when China faced the full force of the virus which first surfaced in Wuhan and later spread to the world, becoming the pandemic of the century and claiming millions of lives all over the world.
"When did patient zero begin in the US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!," Zhao tweeted on March 12, 2020.
He cited the comments of the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield purported remarks that some flu patients in the US may have been misdiagnosed and had coronavirus.
Zhao’s tweet was the direct allegation that the US Army contingent which took part in the Wuhan military games in 2019 spread the virus.
A day later the Chinese Foreign Ministry distanced itself from the tweet put out by Zhao with his senior colleague Geng Shuang saying that “there are many different opinions about the source of the coronavirus among the international community. We believe this is a matter of science and required professional and scientific assessment”.
A member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Zhao used to aggressively attack the US whenever China faced the heat over the allegations that coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan bio laboratory asking Washington to open its military labs for scrutiny.
Whenever there were racial attacks in the US, Zhao played up on the racial divisions in America in his Twitter account and defended serious allegations against China over the large-scale human rights violations in Xinjiang where Beijing was accused of interning over a million Uygur Muslims in special camps.
Chinese diplomats extensively use Twitter, which is banned in China, to promote Chinese diplomacy and policies.