China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, a dapper man in well-pressed suits, keeps up a relentless travel schedule, more than 30 countries so far this year, to places big and small: island nations in the Pacific, Central Asia on China’s western periphery and, often, Africa.
He is the campaigner for the global ambitions of his boss, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, carrying the message that Beijing will not be pushed around, least of all by the United States.
During a meeting last month with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Indonesia, Wang arrived with a list of four "wrongdoings to be corrected,” including that the U.S. must rectify its "serious Sinophobia.” Relations would be at a "dead end” if the demands were ignored, Global Times, a nationalist Communist Party newspaper, warned later.