The Rise of China’s Zhao Lijian Diplomacy: A Time Series Analysis

China’s wolf warrior diplomacy has attracted extensive attention since 2020. One of the most prominent “wolf warriors” is Zhao Lijian, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson. Based on weekly Google Trends datasets between August 21, 2016 and August 8, 2021, this study provides a quantitative description of the development of Zhao Lijian diplomacy. Employing Granger causality tests and autoregressive distributed lag models, this study finds that Zhao Lijian diplomacy is part of China’s wolf warrior diplomacy. Most importantly, COVID-19 may be the only factor that has driven the rise of Zhao Lijian diplomacy. This study contributes to academia by presenting a new quantitative approach to international relations studies and contributes to our understanding of China’s foreign policy.