As China tries to present a friendlier image, a new face appears

Faced with declining foreign investment at home, China has tried to soften its image in the United States and Europe and play nice with some of its neighbors. One Communist Party official has played an unusually prominent role in the change in tone.

In New York, he told an audience of scientists and businesspeople that China was not trying to rewrite the US-led world order. In Paris, he said that China's modernization would benefit Europe and the world. In Beijing, he told The ambassador of India, a regional rival, said China hoped relations would “return to a healthy and stable” track.

The official, Liu Jianchao, heads the Communist Party's diplomatic arm, a body that promotes the party's ideology and influence abroad. However, his recent engagements suggest to analysts that he has auditioned for the role of China's next foreign minister.

For Beijing, appointing a new foreign minister, possibly as soon as March at a legislative meeting, would help stabilize the country's diplomatic apparatus after last year's dramatic shake-up.

In July, the party abruptly ousted then-Foreign Minister Qin Gang amid speculation that he had engaged in a romantic relationship that may have endangered national security. Mr. Qin's predecessor, Wang Yi, was reappointed to the post; Mr. Wang is also director of the party's foreign affairs committee, a position usually held by someone other than the foreign minister.

Mr. Liu's appointment would signal a break from the abrasive “wolf warrior” diplomacy that has come to symbolize China's assertive stance under China's top leader Xi Jinping, at least in tone if not substance.

Mr. Liu is fluent in English and briefly studied at the University of Oxford. He has a knack for defending Beijing's most fervent positions, such as its claims to the self-governing island of Taiwan, without being caustic. Mr. Liu is considered a reliable party loyalist. He burnished his reputation by helping to lead a controversial campaign called Operation Fox Hunt to restore political power. corrupt businessmen and officials from abroad.

Many who have met Mr. Liu say he is more informal and engaging than other Chinese officials, seemingly comfortable going off script.

“Liu is a seasoned diplomat who brings the relaxed confidence of a senior party cadre to his dialogues, something missing from most Chinese Foreign Ministry officials who cautiously recite the party line,” said Danny Russel, vice president of Asia Society Policy. Institute and a former US assistant secretary of state who spoke to Mr Liu at a meeting organized by the Asia Society, a research group, in New York.

At another meeting in New York, Mr. Liu downplayed the severity of China's economic slowdown, defended Beijing's ties with Moscow and cast his country as a peaceful nation with no interest in changing the current international order. nor in creating a new one.

“We are one of the builders of the current world order and have benefited from it,” he said the conversationorganized by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The comment understates China's position, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington. China supports only some aspects of the world order, such as its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, but opposes others it sees as a challenge, such as US-led NATO.

Still, Ms. Sun said, it was important that a senior Chinese official chose to highlight Beijing's intentions regarding the world order as it seeks to “lower the pace and temperature” of its relationship with Washington.

Mr. Liu rose through the ranks of the Foreign Ministry, first as a translator and then as a spokesman, and rose to fame working with foreign media during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He then served as ambassador to the Philippines and Indonesia.

In 2015, Mr. Liu took on the job of hunting refugees abroad as vice minister of the feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's secretive and powerful internal anti-corruption bureau.

In that role, Mr. Liu showed off his negotiating skills, recovering large sums of money in hiding and targeting high-profile fugitives such as Lai Changxing, a Chinese businessman and billionaire who fled to Canada to avoid charges that he ran a smuggling ring. Mr Lai was convicted and is now serving a life sentence. Human rights groups have described the Fox Hunt campaign as a form of transnational repression.

Mr Liu boosted his party credentials again in 2017 when he was appointed top anti-corruption official in the coastal province of Zhejiang, where Mr Xi was once party leader. He was appointed deputy director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, a high-level party office established in 2018 after Mr Xi sought to give the party even greater control over China's international relations strategy.

In Xi's decade in power, he has sought to expand the party's grip over China's vast government bureaucracy and society. “East, west, south, north and center, the party leads everything,” Mr Xi said at a party conclave in 2017.

That shift was once again underlined when Mr. Liu was appointed head of the International Relations Department in his current position in 2022. Traditionally, the department was charged with maintaining close ties with communist parties in other countries, such as North Korea and Vietnam. It left regular state diplomacy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Liu has violated these norms by meeting with foreign ministers around the world, giving the party access to diplomatic back channels that are rarely publicized. While in the United States in January, Mr. Liu met with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, believed to be the first time the serving head of the International Liaison Department had met with a secretary of state.

China and the United States stabilized relations in November after a summit between Mr Xi and President Biden outside San Francisco. But tensions could flare again over a number of disputes that remain unresolved – including the status of Taiwan and restrictions on technology exports to China.

In Britain, Mr. Liu signaled China's determination to vigorously protect its interests. During a panel in Britain last summer, Mr. Liu was asked about “wolf warrior” diplomacy. He responded in his typically amiable manner, explaining that China wanted to make friends around the world. But he warned: “If China is under pressure and Chinese policies are under pressure, we will indeed show a fighting spirit.”

Olivia Wang reporting contributed.