Fang Lian Talks: Wolf Warrior Warnings! Reviewing the countries that have been warned by the Chinese Communist Party over the years! Are these warnings useful? Does being friends with the Chinese Communist Party mean getting rich? Is making an enemy of the Chinese Communist Party asking for trouble?
This video reviews the effectiveness of the Chinese Communist Party's "Wolf Warrior warnings" and economic sanctions against countries like Japan, Paraguay, and Eswatini in recent years, and explores the practical impact that maintaining good or hostile relations with China has on various economies. The author points out that the Chinese Communist Party lacks the financial sanction tools of the West, and its retaliatory measures such as the ban on Japanese seafood often backfire; meanwhile, the export of the Chinese infrastructure model to Africa through the Belt and Road has become a burden due to local incompatibility and a lack of market mechanisms, leading to the failure of China's diplomatic and economic deterrence.
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Recently, after Sanae Takaichi came to power, relations between Japan and China have begun to deteriorate rapidly. Many people have also begun to denounce Sanae Takaichi, saying that she does not know what is good for her, that she abandoned the Chinese market by stirring up nationalist sentiments, and that she is destroying Japan's economy. However, incidents similar to the one involving Sanae Takaichi are not the first of their kind. We have also continuously heard a narrative: namely, that a certain country or a certain brand is going to lose the big Chinese market and is finished because it offended China. At the same time, there is also the narrative that look at so-and-so, because they had good relations with the Chinese Communist Party, they are now making a fortune.
Does this kind of situation really exist? Will having bad relations with China really result in a ruined economy, and having good relations with China make the economy take off? Hello everyone, I am Toronto Fang Lian. In this episode, let's talk about the matter of being friends with the Chinese Communist Party. In recent years, one of the representative countries with relatively tense relations with China should be Japan. Japan has recently suffered two consecutive rounds of blows: the first round was the nuclear wastewater issue in 2023, and the second round was the recent rise to power of Sanae Takaichi.
Japan's discharge of nuclear wastewater occurred in August 2023. At that time, the Chinese internet, both inside and outside the Great Firewall, was in a fierce uproar. Of course, whether this nuclear wastewater was hyped up by the Chinese Communist Party or truly harmful to physical health, I believe there is no need to debate it anymore today. Today, everyone should know the result. Anyone who can still believe that nuclear wastewater is harmful to physical health today should go check if their brain has been affected by nuclear radiation and mutated. Of course, the specific truth is not important, because starting in the second half of 2023, the Chinese Communist Party completely blocked the import of Japanese aquatic products due to the nuclear wastewater issue. Among them, the Chinese mainland completely banned the import of Japanese aquatic products, while Hong Kong banned the import of aquatic products from ten prefectures and cities including Tokyo, Fukushima, and Nagano.
So, are Japan's aquatic product exports finished because of China's ban? The answer is no. Before China completely blocked Japanese aquatic products in 2022, the proportion of Japan's aquatic product exports to the Chinese mainland accounted for 22.5% of its total export volume, and Hong Kong accounted for 19.5% of its total export volume, with the two combined accounting for more than 40% of Japan's total aquatic product export volume. Theoretically, China's embargo should have had a huge impact.
However, its actual impact was quite minor. According to data from the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the total scale of Japan's seafood exports in 2022 was 387.3 billion yen. In 2023, because the ban was only introduced in August, the overall impact was relatively small, and export volume still reached 390.1 billion yen. The year that truly saw a significant impact was 2024, as the ban came into effect; in that year, Japan's seafood exports dropped to 360.9 billion yen, a year-on-year decrease of 7.5 percent. But by 2025, Japan's seafood products immediately rebounded, hitting a new record for exports at 423.1 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 17.2 percent. So, after Japan stopped selling its seafood to China, who on earth did it sell it to?
By comparison, after the ban took effect, exports to China basically dropped to zero. However, although Hong Kong had partial bans, it did not dampen the enthusiasm of Hong Kong residents for purchasing Japanese seafood, and exports to Hong Kong continued to grow against the trend. Beyond that, the even larger increases came from the United States and Vietnam, with the two sharing the bulk of the former Chinese exports. On top of that, even Thailand came in to grab a piece of the pie. Why did this situation happen? Why was this sanction completely useless? There is actually a very ironic thing in all of this, which is that, unlike our traditional understanding that China purchases Japanese seafood for things like sashimi and sea urchin,
China's largest seafood imports from Japan were actually not raw materials for Japanese cuisine, such as tuna or salmon, but scallops. In 2022, 54 percent of the seafood exported by Japan to China consisted of scallops. So why do Chinese people eat so many scallops? Indeed, China cannot possibly eat all of those scallops. These scallops are actually processed and sold to people in Western countries like the US to eat. It is an industrial chain. Westerners are relatively fond of eating scallops; steaks are often served with a scallop as a side dish, and high-end scallops are generally those with larger meat.
Chinese scallops, due to their smaller size, do not have meat that is large enough. The larger ones are Hokkaido scallops. But as we all know, Westerners are also rather lazy; they don't like eating fish with bones, and when eating scallops, naturally they don't like the ones with shells, preferring to eat the scallop meat directly. Therefore, after Hokkaido scallops are caught and before they reach the dining table, they have to go through multiple processes such as shelling, extracting the adductor muscle, cleaning, freezing, and packaging.
And because these processes are labor-intensive industries where machines cannot easily intervene and human labor is required, in the global scallop production chain, this process was allocated to China, where labor is relatively cheaper, forming a mindset of Japan fishing, China processing, and Europe and America consuming. Turns out the CCP didn't import nuclear-contaminated scallops not to protect Chinese people, but to protect Westerners, preventing them from eating nuclear-tainted food. Oh, how truly great, our Chairman Xi is truly so great. So you see, when the CCP suddenly stopped importing Japanese seafood, who did it hit? After the ban on Japanese seafood took effect in 2023, China lost its main source of scallop raw materials, and processing-with-supplied-materials could no longer be carried out.
According to a Lianhe Zaobao report, due to government bans, multiple scallop processing companies along China's southeast coast were forced to relocate to Southeast Asia to carry out scallop processing, which is the fundamental reason why Thailand and Vietnam were able to shoulder so many import shares. In reality, it was not that they consumed all that much of Japan's seafood, but rather that they took on the processing role in the scallop industry chain. Because of the embargo on Japanese scallops, China's scallop industry also lost its raw materials, causing the export scale of frozen scallops to plummet from $334 million in 2022 to $150 million in 2025, getting cut directly in half. In fact, China's sudden hype over nuclear wastewater in 2023 was utterly baffling; the reason for the hype was baffling, and the direction of the sanctions and retaliation was baffling too.
After the sanctions came out, on the surface it looked like the CCP was angry and striking a blow at Japan, refusing to consume your products anymore. But in reality, it was the CCP throwing a punch and delivering solid, heavy blows to the Chinese people themselves. The CCP really knows how to use you. Of course, this kind of situation is not the first time either. Starting from 2010, the CCP has launched about ten major economic threats; among them, except for the one against Mongolia which achieved relatively notable results, and some results achieved in the standoff with Trump, the remaining majority of economic threat cases were completely ineffective, and could even be said to have backfired.
Moreover, apart from Mongolia, China's economic measures directly led to setbacks in the other party's economic development. China's other economic measures basically had no impact on the development of these countries, and couldn't even affect the industries of those countries that were being sanctioned. Furthermore, not only was this kind of single-campaign sanction ineffective, but even if you had a falling out with China to the extreme, breaking off relations to the point of complete non-intercourse, the impact wouldn't even be that significant.
In our understanding, if a country does not have diplomatic relations with the world's number one power, the United States, it is basically synonymous with poverty, like North Korea or Cuba. And if it does not have diplomatic relations with the world's second-largest economy, China, then even if it is not equal to poverty, it should at least be equal to half-poverty. But in reality, it seems to not matter much. There are not many countries in the world that have completely severed diplomatic relations with China. In Latin America, there is a country with particularly poor relations with China: Paraguay. Paraguay is Taiwan's largest diplomatic ally by area, and because it has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it naturally does not have diplomatic relations with China. Of course, because it does not have diplomatic relations with China, Paraguay is basically unable to export any products to China. In 2025, Paraguay's export volume to China was only 50 million USD. So, under these circumstances, how is Paraguay's economic development? Actually, it is not bad.
Over the past fifteen years, Paraguay's average GDP growth rate has been 3.6 percent. Although this is not much compared to these Asian countries, and can even be considered poor, such things must be divided by region. Among the thirty-odd countries in Latin America, Paraguay's performance is considered decent, ranking fifth. Especially considering that Paraguay is an inland country and is sandwiched between Brazil and Argentina, two underachievers in Latin America, Paraguay's performance is actually quite good. In addition, there is also a country in Africa with very poor relations with China, and that is Eswatini. This country has recently been trending on search lists because it accepted an interview with Lai Ching-te. So, how is this country's economic performance? Average, but it definitely cannot be called a collapse.
Over the past ten years, Eswatini's average GDP growth rate has been 2.5 percent. This level is slightly lower than the average growth rate of 3.2 percent in Africa, ranking in the lower-middle tier in Africa. This situation is clearly abnormal for China's economic scale. So let's think about what happens after completely severing relations with the United States and being sanctioned by the United States. After Venezuela was sanctioned by the United States in 2010, its per capita GDP fell by 80 percent in ten years; after Iran was sanctioned by the United States in 2012, its GDP fell by up to 60 percent at its worst. Why is it that when it comes to us, there is not even the combat effectiveness to cause a 10 percent drop? Why are the 'Wolf Warrior' warnings completely ineffective? Is it because China's economic strength is not strong enough? Actually, no. In my opinion, there are several reasons for this situation.
First, the first reason is that although China is already the world's second-largest economy, this world trade system was not built by the CCP, so the CCP's means of economic sanctions are very lacking. When countries like the United States and the European Union generally want to sanction other countries, what means do they use? They mainly use financial means, and they often resort to financial sanctions. To what extent can these financial sanctions go? Not only can they be blocked with one click, preventing US and EU companies from buying products from Iran or Venezuela, not doing business with these countries, and not doing business with named companies, but sometimes as long as you are named, Chinese companies must also obey the arrangements. For example, earlier this year, five Chinese refineries were added to the US SDN list because of their transactions with Iran, helping Iran refine oil.
After being added to this list, even Chinese banks cannot conduct transactions with them. If Chinese banks conduct transactions with them, these banks will be linked into the US sanctions list and become targets of US sanctions. This kind of financial blockade by the United States can easily remove a country or a company from the world trade system, thereby destroying the country's economy. But the CCP lacks such means. The means the CCP uses back and forth lie in not buying your things and not selling your things. In the past, the effect has always been relatively poor. After messing around for a long time recently, they finally came up with rare earths, which can be considered a bit of a laugh, and resisted for a wave. At present, it seems to have a certain effect. But will these rare earths repeat the mistakes made against Japan in 2010? Because the rare earth card was played too early, it actually made the other side start producing rare earths themselves and adapt in advance? We don't know.
However, speaking of the United States, although its means are tough, in fact, the effect of the United States is also very bad. US sanctions can indeed quickly destroy a country's economy, but it is often difficult to achieve the results the United States wants, because US sanctions always have this loophole or that loophole. While sanctioning a country may lead to the collapse of that country's economy and the people of the dictatorial country will suffer, dictators can often find some loopholes and still live a life above others.
At this point, dictators do not care about the lives and deaths of the people, so these sanctions are practically ineffective. For a dictatorship, if it doesn't hurt the dictator, it's as if there are no sanctions at all. Therefore, even though Iran and Venezuela have been subjected to long-term sanctions, no fundamental changes have occurred. The outcome the United States desired was ultimately not achieved. However, overall, compared to the Chinese Communist Party, it is still slightly better; at least it appears to have some results. Of course, the lack of diplomatic weapons is only one part of the problem. As we say, when dealing with a donkey, you need both a carrot and a stick. If you want to do well in diplomacy, you not only need weapons, but you also have to be able to provide benefits to others.
Deng Xiaoping once said: "All countries that have good relations with the United States have grown rich." This statement is very true. Countries that are friends with the United States can hardly avoid becoming rich. I believe this is also one of the reasons why so many countries are willing to tilt toward the United States. However, the CCP's ability to offer the carrot is inferior even to its rare earth stick. Take Latin America, for example: there is Paraguay, which has not yet established diplomatic relations with China, and there are also some countries that have relatively good relations with China, yet China basically cannot bring any benefits to these countries. Take Brazil, for instance. Because Brazil has long been governed by left-wing parties, it has become the country in all of Latin America with the closest relations to China. Since the year 2000, China-Brazil bilateral trade has entered a fast lane of growth.
By 2025, the bilateral trade volume between Brazil and China reached 188 billion dollars, ranking first in all of Latin America. So, with Brazil and China doing so much business and engaging in so much bilateral trade, did the economy see any returns? One can only say there were basically no returns. Over the past fifteen years, among the major Latin American countries—including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia—Brazil's GDP growth rate has only ranked second to last, better only than Argentina. At the same time, I also collected the import and export data and GDP growth rates of all Latin American countries over the past fifteen years, and had AI perform a simple regression analysis for me.
The regression analysis also shows that the deeper a country's trade ties with China, the worse its economy tends to be. According to the regression data, for every 1 percentage point increase in Latin American countries' trade with China as a share of GDP, GDP growth decreases by an average of 0.168 percentage points. For the United States, the exact opposite is true: for every 1 percentage point increase in Latin American countries' trade with the U.S. as a share of GDP, the average GDP growth rate increases by 0.022 percentage points. Looking at the macro data of all of Latin America as a whole, the past fifteen years have been a period in which Latin American trade has completely tilted toward China.
However, this has precisely been the period with the worst economic growth in all of Latin America over the past fifteen years. The average GDP growth rate in Latin America over the past fifteen years has been 1.7%, a performance inferior even to that of the Latin American debt crisis period in the 1980s. When this kind of slowdown in GDP growth—or the phenomenon where more trade with China correlates with lower GDP growth—occurs, it cannot be said that it is entirely due to the negative impact of China. Because statistical correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Just because a rooster crows and the sun rises, you cannot say the sun was called up by the rooster.
Nevertheless, while this set of data cannot prove that more trade with China brings disadvantages, it at least demonstrates that more trade with China does not bring any direct benefits. Of course, besides the issue of trade, receiving support from China is sometimes also a bad thing. The most typical problem in this regard is found in Africa. Africa has long been a region of sustained assistance from China, especially since 2015 when Xi Jinping's prized Belt and Road initiative began to gain momentum. After that, basically all countries in Africa, except for Eswatini, participated in the Belt and Road and received its key support.
However, right after the Belt and Road started, Africa's GDP growth rate also began to experience a cliff-like decline. Over the past decade, Africa's average GDP growth rate was only 3.2%. Going back another decade, from 2005 to 2014, Africa's average GDP growth rate was 5.3%, marking a golden era for the continent. If we go back another twenty years, from 1995 to 2024, Africa's average GDP growth rate was 4.1%.
In fact, the GDP growth rate of any other decade was higher than that following the start of the Belt and Road. At the same time, I also compared the GDP growth rates of ten major African countries—including Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria—during the five years before and the five years after they joined the Belt and Road. The results showed that only one country experienced faster growth after joining the Belt and Road, and that was Rwanda. In addition, two countries remained flat, while the remaining seven countries saw their growth slow down after joining the Belt and Road. Why is this the case? African countries have been studied relatively extensively, making it easier to find this data and its causes.
Back in 2021, several renowned economists, including well-known German economist Dreher, jointly published a paper that detailed the results of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) aid to most parts of the world. These results actually vary quite widely depending on the type of aid. Currently, China's foreign aid is mainly divided into two categories: ODA (Official Development Assistance) and OOF (Other Official Flows). To put it bluntly, this is simply the difference between directly giving away money like a fool and lending you money to help you build roads.
Regarding the Belt and Road, people might have a misconception that the CCP has always been providing uncompensated aid to these countries, sending money to our Black African brothers. But in reality, that is not the case. The CCP's uncompensated ODA aid accounts for only 20% of its foreign aid. Most of the CCP's aid initially consisted of loans to African buddies, and then forcing those African buddies to use the loans to hire Chinese engineering teams to build highways, base stations, and high-speed rail for them. It is a state of stepping on one's left foot with one's right foot to spiral into the sky. Studies show that only when China provides ODA aid—that is, uncompensated aid—does it help economic growth in these countries. Once the OOF model of assistance is provided, not only does it fail to help economic growth in these regions, but it also begins to have a negative effect starting in the fourth year.
In recent years, as I've traveled all over the country, I've met quite a few immigrant Black friends. When I chat with them and they ask me where I'm from, I always say I'm Chinese. At that point, quite a few Black friends will thank us Chinese people, saying that China has helped them build a lot of roads. But in reality, these roads are not uncompensated; in the end, these roads cannot bring positive effects to the economic growth of these countries, and instead become a burden. Why does this happen? The key actually lies in the model. We say that when the United States gets on good terms with a country, what does it bring to those countries? It brings free market capitalism, and of course, it might also bring democracy and freedom—that's not guaranteed. Behind this, actually, we can say that when the United States improves its relations with a country, it is actually exporting the American model to that country.
For a Chinese person, we should feel this very clearly. Ever since our relations with the United States began to improve, we also entered the fast lane of development. How did we get into this fast lane? Everyone should be clear about it. In fact, it is because China gradually began to look like the United States, rather than the Soviet Union. Of course, when China provides foreign aid, besides providing funds and infrastructure, behind the scenes it is actually providing something else to these countries. What is provided here is not a free market or a democratic system, but the Chinese model.
It is the model where the whole nation pours its efforts into developing infrastructure, believing that to get rich, one must first build roads. But as soon as this model was exported to Africa, it suffered from severe culture shock, and the results became utterly abysmal. It can be said that currently, most countries accepting the Belt and Road cannot directly benefit from the infrastructure, and the infrastructure built with spent money will ultimately always become a burden. Many OOF aid projects to Africa have been forced to turn into uncompensated aid because African brothers cannot repay the loans. I believe the most critical reason for such a situation lies in what the Chinese model actually is, and in the CCP completely misunderstanding how China rose in the first place.
In the CCP's imagination, it pictures itself as a very great, very correct, and very wise patriarch, while Chinese people are just dimwits who can only stay mute. China rose because the CCP led everyone with great foresight, denying themselves enjoyment and spending, and investing all their money into infrastructure and useful places—a miracle supposedly created by CCP dictatorship. Therefore, the CCP looks at Africa the same way: the reason you African countries cannot develop is simply because you lack a great, visionary patriarch like the CCP, and you don't understand the spirit of building roads first to get rich and enduring hardship first.
And now? Let me help you; let me help you build roads first and then get rich. But in reality, China's economic miracle came from joining the global market and the hard work of the Chinese people; both are indispensable. Africa has now joined the world economy as well, but African people do not endure hardship like the Chinese. When infrastructure is transplanted wholesale to Africa, encountering African people who cannot endure hardship, and arriving in the auspicious land of Africa, this highway suddenly stops working and fails to yield any returns. Comparing the two, why did China ultimately prosper? Was it due to the CCP's good command, or the Chinese people's hard work? The answer becomes instantly clear. This has also led to a situation where many countries truly cut off ties with China, yet their losses remain very limited.
Eswatini and Paraguay may have seen their exports affected due to severing diplomatic ties with China, but by a stroke of luck, they also avoided having to accept the Chinese model or massive infrastructure projects crammed down their throats by China. As a result, the losses to their exports were actually offset by not accepting those mega-infrastructure projects, which also rendered the wolf warrior warnings and diplomatic cuts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completely valueless. Today, China's international influence is indeed abysmal; its wolf warrior warnings to this or that country end up being nothing more than a joke.
Yet this is not simply caused by China's faltering economy or insufficient size, but rather by the problem of the Chinese model. Nowadays, being friends with China yields no benefits for many countries, which also reflects the CCP's failure to recognize its own level of competence. It naively hallucinates that China's miracle is due to the CCP rather than the hardworking Chinese people. In the future, I believe China will surely become one of the most influential countries in the world. I believe that one day in the future, China's warnings will indeed become real warnings just like those of the United States—whoever it points to dies. However, this scenario will most likely not happen during the era of CCP rule.