Besides President Xi Jinping, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian may be the official most familiar to many Australians.
With over 1.9 million followers on Twitter, the 50-year-old is known for his vicious attacks against the West, once posting a graphic of an Australian soldier holding a bloodied knife to the throat of an Afghan child in November 2020.
The post was referring to the Brereton report that found Australian special forces committed at least 39 unlawful killings during the Afghanistan war.
It was also one of the climaxes of a dramatic decline in the Australia-China relationship, after the Morrison government called for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 in May 2020.
Zhao's confrontational style of diplomacy gave him the nickname of "Wolf Warrior diplomat", inspired by China's patriotic action movie of the same name.
One of the movie's famous lines is: "However difficult it could be, anyone who dares to offend China will be punished."
Despite criticism from the West, Zhao was endorsed by Beijing, with a growing number of Chinese diplomats around the world joining Twitter and adopting the aggressive diplomatic style.
But after two years sparring on the global stage, Zhao's career was suddenly forced to make a U-turn.
The Wolf Warrior diplomat mysteriously leaves his post
On January 9, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Zhao was leaving the spokesperson role, and would join the Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs as the deputy head.
The department takes charge of border policies, including negotiations over the South China Sea and its boundaries.
While the two roles are considered to be the same level, the transfer means Zhao is stepping back from the front line of China's diplomacy, with unclear reasons.
The ABC has contacted China's Foreign Ministry for comment.
Zhao's reassignment has sparked speculation about China's switch away from Wolf Warrior diplomacy, which several experts have disagreed with.
One week prior to Zhao's transfer, Beijing had appointed Qin Gang, then China's ambassador to the US and a trusted aide of Xi, as the new foreign minister.
Qin was the ministry's spokesperson from 2007 to 2010 and from 2011 to 2014 was known as the prototype of China's Wolf Warrior diplomacy, having frequently challenged foreign media during press conferences.
His appointment was seen as a continuation of Xi's vision of foreign policy, which calls for China to play a more proactive and assertive role in the international community.
Turning away from Deng Xiaoping's strategy that China should "keep a low profile" in global affairs since the 1980s, Xi stated in 2014 that China should adopt the newly coined "Major Country Diplomacy".
But after securing his third term of CCP leadership last year, Xi immediately made several visits abroad, attended G20, and met with his foreign counterparts.
His government also swiftly announced the sidelining of one of their most aggressive diplomats.
But it doesn't mean Xi is changing his approach to foreign policies, according to John Blaxland, international security professor at the Australian National University.
He said despite the shifts in rhetoric, China still continues to make an active military presence around Taiwan Strait, Diaoyu Island (known as Senkaku Island in Japan) and South China Sea.
So if China isn't changing its actions, then why is Zhao leaving his post?
COVID-19 changed Zhao's career for better, and for worse
Before taking the role of China's foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao was the minister-counselor at the Chinese embassy in Pakistan until 2019.
For decades, Pakistan had been called China's "Iron Brother", with China investing more than $US19 billion ($27 billion) in Pakistan — ranging from energy, infrastructure and transport, at a time when the US government removed its focus from the country.
After relocating to Pakistan in 2015, Zhao was reported to represent Beijing in delivering these projects, making himself "the face of Chinese diplomacy in Pakistan and Afghanistan".
Five years later, Zhao was appointed as the foreign ministry spokesperson at a time when the US-China trade war worsened during Donald Trump's administration.
It was also the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which immediately became a new political clash between the US and China.
In March, Zhao attracted international headlines by tweeting that the US army might have created the COVID-19 virus, which led to several conspiracy battles between the top officials of the two countries.
Kerry Liu, a Sydney-based independent researcher who had made a time-series analysis on Zhao's Twitter posts, found COVID-19 had been a key — and maybe the only — factor that drove the rise of Zhao's reputation as the aggressive Wolf Warrior diplomat on Twitter.
Liu explained China's economic strength before the pandemic and the rise of domestic nationalism encouraged diplomatic officials to showcase the Chinese system as superior to the West.
Liu said the COVID-19 pandemic — which China effectively managed during the early stages — provided an opportunity for diplomats like Zhao to act assertively and aggressively on social media platforms previously dominated by Western politicians.
"If without COVID, there are any other things showing that the Chinese system is superior, they will also act similarly to those," he said.
In December 2021, when Omicron was spreading rapidly around the world except China, Zhao told foreign journalists they should "secretly feel relieved" they lived in China during the global pandemic.
But those comments would come back to haunt the spokesperson in April, when China's richest city Shanghai was in lockdown and netizens voiced their anger and frustration over the clip.
Zhao's family has also faced accusations of hypocrisy when it comes to China's COVID-19 policies.
In late November, when protests against COVID-zero policy spread through China, netizens spotted Zhao's wife, Tang Tianru, condemning the protesters on Chinese social media Weibo.
But some were quick to point out she had been caught travelling in Germany in June 2022, at a time when the Chinese government implemented strict travel restrictions toward its citizens.
Tang was also found hanging out with Zhao in a park in Beijing without wearing masks, at a time when ordinary Chinese citizens could be subjected to serious punishment for violating the mask mandate.
It is unclear whether the public outrage toward Zhao and his wife was the reason for his reassignment.
What does seem more likely is that Zhao was caught up in a broader Foreign Ministry reshuffle against a backdrop of criticism over China's COVID-zero policy and economic decline, experts suggest.
China is still aggressive, but not towards everyone
While the world is interpreting Beijing's signals from Zhao's reassignment, recent research by University College Dublin (UCD) has noticed a shift of Wolf Warrior diplomacy since May 2021.
That was when the Communist Party's Politburo held a collective study session over China's global communication strategy.
The UCD research analysed more than 200,000 tweets from nearly 200 Chinese media and diplomatic accounts since that session, finding Chinese diplomats in OECD countries had moderated their tweets.
It noted that diplomats based in non-OECD still followed the Wolf Warrior style in their tweets.
Currently there are 38 member countries in the OECD, with the majority of them often classified as western countries.
Alexander Dukalskis, co-author of the research and associate professor of international relations at University College Dublin, said it was important to remember China always targeted different audiences with different messages.
"It sometimes shows that it is 'standing up' to the West, which may play well for some audiences who are also sceptical of the US or Europe and their allies," he said.
"It's hard to say exactly why China softens its tone sometimes with Western states, but it may be that it sees that the more aggressive approach can sour public perceptions of China, or it may want to achieve tactical aims at some point in time."
On Tuesday and Wednesday, China announced it would stop issuing short-term visas for travellers from South Korea and Japan, as the reiteration against the two countries' COVID curbs.
Prior to China's announcement, South Korea stopped issuing short-term visas for Chinese travellers, while requesting pre-departure COVID tests, along with Japan.
Meanwhile, after two years of frozen trade relationship, Chinese ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian suggested resolving the trade disputes between the two countries on Tuesday.
Professor Blaxland said while it was worth watching whether China would further soften its aggressive, assertive tone in foreign diplomacy, it should be kept in mind that "the game hasn't changed".
"Words matter. There's this wonderful saying that the pen is mightier than the sword," he said.
"Actions speak louder than words and while actions do speak louder, sometimes the words can camouflage the actions."
