BEIJING - China has transferred a senior diplomat closely associated with the foreign ministry’s more confrontational shift in recent years to a new role, in the latest sign that Beijing is rethinking its so-called “Wolf Warrior” approach.

Mr Zhao Lijian, 50, has been named deputy director of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, the foreign ministry said on its website on Monday. While technically a lateral move, the new post is far less prominent than the spokesman’s podium, where Mr Zhao had since February 2020 become one of China’s most prominent public officials, with almost 8 million followers on the Weibo social media platform.

The move comes less than two weeks after China’s former ambassador to the United States, Mr Qin Gang – a one-time foreign ministry spokesman himself – was named foreign minister. Mr Qin, 56, has demonstrated a more traditional, less social-media-driven approach and signalled a desire to mend ties with countries such as the US and Australia, some of the most prominent targets of Mr Zhao’s criticism.

The personnel shifts coincide with a push by President Xi Jinping to re-engage the US and its allies, holding his first in-person summit with President Joe Biden in Bali, Indonesia, in November.

Mr Xi has sought to improve relations with leaders of top US allies, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian leader Anthony Albanese.

The foreign ministry in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr Zhao’s move on Tuesday.

Mr Zhao rose to prominence with an unusually combative Twitter persona while serving in China’s mission to Pakistan, including a heated July 2019 exchange with former US national security adviser Susan Rice about alleged racial segregation in Washington. He quickly became associated with a more confrontational generation of “wolf warrior” diplomats, the term referring to a series of action films depicting a Rambo-like hero vanquishing foreign foes.

His appointment to the spokesman’s office in August 2019 was seen as Beijing’s endorsement of Mr Zhao’s style, and numerous other Chinese diplomats around the world embraced it. In the early days of the pandemic, Mr Zhao prompted outrage in the US by promoting a conspiracy theory about the origin of Covid-19, questioning whether it was brought to Wuhan by visiting American athletes.

Mr Zhao also courted controversy when he posted on Twitter an apparent reference to allegations that Australian soldiers in Afghanistan were involved in unlawful killings, prompting the Australian prime minister to demand an apology. In 2022, Mr Zhao was among the chief purveyors of Russian-backed conspiracy theories about US bioweapons labs in Ukraine.

The assertive approach was popular with Chinese Internet audiences eager for a response to then-US president Donald Trump’s Twitter-driven foreign policy. But it also contributed to a collapse in public support across the developed world, with the share of people in the US with unfavourable views of China rising to 82 per cent in 2021.

News of Mr Zhao’s transfer had attracted more than 23 million readers on Weibo as of Tuesday morning, with many interpreting it as a demotion. The Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs oversees policies on land and maritime boundaries, including the slow-moving negotiations with South-east Asian nations to establish a code of conduct in the South China Sea.

Some Chinese Internet users attributed the move to a widely circulated Weibo post in November purportedly coming from Mr Zhao’s partner, suggesting that he worked too hard without enough recognition. “His wife’s wish has come true,” one comment read.

Others also read the move as related to China’s efforts to tone down its diplomacy.

“Brother Jian is more hawkish, which may make him less suitable for the adjustment in our foreign policy,” one Weibo user said, using a nickname for Mr Zhao. “When we need the hawk again, we will let it out.”

Mr Zhao had already been hosting the Foreign Ministry’s daily news briefing less frequently in recent months. He had 19 appearances at the podium from Sept 1 to the end of the year, compared with 72 in the first eight months of the year. His most recent appearance was Dec 2. BLOOMBERG